Pikmin Colors
by zavegonzo
Summary: (CANCELLED) Two boys, Johnny and Dave, find themselves becoming Pikmin after finding some weird flowers... Will they get back to being human? Or will they stay as Pikmin for the rest of their lives? Rated T for a few moments of violence and cussing in later chapters. (THIS SUCKS. PLEASE READ THE REWRITE "Colorful" INSTEAD.)
1. Active Vegetables

It was a typical, peaceful spring afternoon; birds were chirping, flowers were being pollinated, and on this specific day two kids around the age of 12 were eating lunch at school and talking.

"Hey, Johnny!" one kid said to the other.

"Yeah, Dave?" the other kid, Johnny, replied.

"I dare you to stay in that cave next to your home overnight!"

"Uh," Johnny paused, surprised by the suddenness of the dare. "OK, Dave, but that seems pretty easy. I know it's a dare and all, but do I get anything if I do it?" The one who started this conversation, Dave, thought for a moment, before saying "I'll give you ten dollars, and if you can't do it, _you_ have to give _me_ ten dollars!"

Johnny thought it over, taking a bite of his sandwich he got for lunch. _'Is that seriously it?! That's super easy! I'm not afraid of the dark, so it's not much of a challenge, and it's for ten bucks_ _… It's not much, but it's practically free money!'_ he thought.

"Sure," he agreed.

"Alright! Make sure you're there by 6 o'clock!" Dave said enthusiastically. "And just to make sure, I'll stay just outside the cave while you're there," he continued. Johnny halted for a moment, dumbfounded. "Can't I just… record my time there with a camera or something?" he asked. "Oh, you could just make it to look like you stayed there! Y'know, video editing and all that," Dave replied.

Johnny stared at Dave in bewilderment. _'What kind of tech wizard does he think I am?'_ he thought, taking another bite of his sandwich. "I… I _guess_ that makes sense," he lied. Dave frowned at Johnny's tone. "What, do you think it's a stupid idea?" "No, no! I don't think it's stupid!" Dave paused for a moment, eventually replying, "Okayyy…"

"…Remember to do it, alright?" he asked. "Alright," Johnny reaffirmed, taking yet another bite of his sandwich. "Good," Dave said.

Staying true to his word, Johnny remembered his promise, and he went to that cave just a dozen yards away from his house right at 6 PM, with a flashlight in his pocket. Dave was sitting next to the cave's mouth, looking bored and glancing occasionally at a watch on his wrist. "Oh, Johnny! I was almost starting to think you forgot!" said Dave as he noticed Johnny approaching. "Well, why'd you think that? I'm right on time, aren't I?" Johnny replied. Dave checked his watch. "Ah… Yeah, you are," he admitted. "OK, nice. See you tomorrow!" Johnny said as he walked into the cave, pulling a flashlight out of his pocket. "Okay~!" Dave replied, taking out an old hand-me-down Game Boy from his pocket.

In the cave, Johnny turned on his flashlight. It was just a normal cave. Some stalactites hung tightily from the cave's roof, and stalagmites stood up mightily from the floor. He walked further into the cave, looking around. The cave was a bit deep, about the size of a house if the second floor was taken off from above the first and laid down parallel to it. After a few minutes of walking around, Johnny wandered into a roomlike fissure and noticed some strange flowers growing in some dirt. The flowers were brightly red, yellow, blue, purple, white, gray, and pink, with the gray and pink ones sticking up like cups and the rest lying flat against the ground. "Woah," Johnny said in wonder. "These are some weird flowers…" He walked towards the yellow flower, his favorite color, and examined it closely. It had a deep dark green center and five petals extending outwards from it in a counter-clockwise star pattern, with the tip of each petal having a small lightly-tinted pastel yellow ball.

Johnny knelt down to the flower, resting his hand on a petal. It felt like just a normal flower. Johnny then noticed just how big the flowers were, they were easily big enough for him to lie down on one if he curled up a bit, so he decided to try it. He carefully crawled onto the flower, wondering if it would collapse under his weight. Surprisingly, it didn't. "Huh!" Johnny exclaimed surprisedly. He turned over to lie on his back, still amazed the flower could support the weight of someone just around the age where one straddles the edge between boy and man*, and he looked up at the roof of the cave. Some more stalactites were hanging from there, slightly illuminated by Johnny's flashlight which had been laid down resting on the flower. Then, Johnny thought of something. "I kinda feel like showing these flowers to Dave," he spoke to himself. He got up from the flower, grabbing his flashlight, and he walked back to the cave's entrance.

At the cave's entrance, Johnny saw Dave deep in playing a game, having barely noticed Johnny moving from his peripheral vision. "Hm?" said Dave, glancing over from his game. "What are you coming out here for?" he asked. "Let me guess," he continued, "You're too scared to stay there any longer?" he finished with a smirk. "No, Dave," Johnny replied. "I just found some weird flowers in here and I wanted to show you," he explained. "Weird flowers?" Dave asked. "Yeah, let me show you. Come on!" Johnny said as he gestured for Dave to enter the cave with him. Dave sighed. "Okay," he said as he paused and saved his game. "I'll go." And so they went to the deep corner of the cave where Johnny found the flowers.

After a few minutes, they arrived at the flowers. "Wow," Dave said in amazement. "They really _are_ weird flowers." "Yeah, that's why I wanted to show you them," Johnny replied. "Just look at this!" Johnny took a running start and leaped onto the yellow flower, landing on it with grace similar to that of a near-teenager landing onto a flower, and it barely buckled from the force. "Wow!" Dave repeated himself in amazement at the flower's ability to hold up a person. Dave then walked over to another flower next to the one Johnny was on, specifically the red one, which was Dave's favorite color, and sat upon it. They both staid there for a while, contemplating the beauty of the cave and nature and stuff... Then the yellow flower Johnny was on shot up its petals, folding themselves around him and trapping him inside, somewhat like a Venus flytrap. "WHAT THE F-" shouted Dave, interrupted by the red flower trapping him inside in the same way. He struggled as much as he could, which wasn't much considering the small space, but as the time passed, the movements became less and less. Eventually, all movement from inside the flowers came to a halt, and the flowers slowly let down their petals from their folded-up positions... Nothing was in them. It was like there was never anyone there in the first place.

* * *

 _'...'_

 _'...'_

 _'...?'_

 _'... ...!?'_

 _'wh... what is this...? ...'_

 _'that_ _flower... it... agh...'_

 _'I... can't move...'_

 _'...actually... the top... of my head... I can almost... move... it... rrn-_ _‼'_

 _'I feel my head going further up... come on... almost there...!'_

 _'There! My eyes are above... the ground!? I was in the ground!?'_

Johnny found himself mostly underground, with his eyes having just come up after a few minutes of struggling. He paused for a moment, confused as to how he was there, before resuming his struggle to get himself out from the ground. He slowly forced himself out from the ground, revealing more of his face, before he realized something very concerning.

 _'Why am I not breathing!?'_

Johnny tried to force himself to breath, but all he accomplished was giving himself a slight cramp in his upper abdomen. _'Okay, I am **definitely** getting out of here right now to figure out just what is happening!'_ he thought to himself before using all the strength he could muster up to do one thing, go up. He got his shoulders out of the dirt much quicker than his face, and Johnny noticed something else.

 _'Why am I yellow!?'_

His skin was yellower than that of any character on _The Simpsons_ , bright as the flower he had been ensnared in beforehand. He panicked, forcing out his arm from the ground in less time than it would take for a sadistic child to come up with the idea of burning ants with a magnifying glass, with more fervor than that of an overenthusiastic flight attendant bringing alcohol and caviar to a first-class passenger. His arm was just as yellow as his shoulder, with the end having a small hand with three fingers on it, equally spaced, like the hand of a baby born without a pinky finger and a thumb, but flatter and pointier. He stared in wonder at the extremity.

 _'Why ANY OF THIS!?'_

Johnny forced his arm down and pushed, bringing the rest of his body above the ground. He saw that the yellow color of his arm carried on to the rest of his body, which looked much different from a regular human. He had a short, smooth cylindrical body with two short legs, and feet with a shape mirroring his hands, having three equally spaced toes. Johnny noticed something moving from his peripheral vision, and looked up, only to find... a sprout on top of his head. Specifically, he had a long yellow stem with a white bud on top, surrounded by five leaves in a starlike pattern, similar to the flower he had been trapped by earlier. After a small pause in wonder and confusion which may or may not have involved some intense freaking out, Johnny stopped looking at himself, and instead began to look at his surroundings. He was in what seemed to be a large cave, somewhat like the one he was in earlier. Some slightly familiar-looking and very larger than usual stalagmites stood mightily from the ground, and similar stalactites hung tightily from the cave's ceiling. There was also a red sprout coming from the ground next to Johnny!? _'That's gotta be Dave,'_ Johnny thought.

Johnny walked over to the red sprout and stood in front of it, looking at it closely. It was just like the sprout on Johnny's head, with a white bud and five leaves. Johnny reached out a hand and grabbed the sprout, almost instinctively. He tugged on it a little bit, and he could faintly hear an annoyed hum from below the ground. Johnny paused, feeling reaffirmed and slightly surprised, and started to wonder if he could talk in the form he was in. He removed his hand from Dave's sprout and tried to focus on making a sound with his voice. It took some time, but he managed to get himself to talk in a way that sounded very similar to regular human speech.

After a while of saying simple sentences to get himself used to speech in his new form, Johnny refocused his attention on the red sprout. Johnny again grabbed the sprout and pulled with all his might...!

* * *

 _'...'_

 _'...'_

 _'...?!'_

 _'the top of my head... somethings squeezing it... Mmnnh, nouuh...'_

 _'oh, it stopped... what's that... mumbling?'_

 _'...'_

 _'that thing squeezing my head is back... aagh!'_

"Woaahh!"

Dave found himself being flung into the air, being thrown by an odd yellow flower-like creature with big ears. "What the-!?" Dave tried to say, but ended up letting out a noise that sounded like "Oa da!?" He landed abruptly. "You ahrait?" the flower creature... No, wait, this is familiar. Dave had seen this thing before. It was in an old Nintendo GameCube game called "Pikmin", and this thing was that game's namesake... a Pikmin! So, "You ahrait?" the _Pikmin_ asked Dave. Dave tried to respond, but he found himself unable to talk right... "Ah... I ahw... Uh... ...Yeah," Dave said, nodding. "An' I assume you're Dave?" it asked. "Yeah, uh, ahn... Ahn y-yuu'ae... uh, Johnny?" Dave tried to say 'Yeah, and you're Johnny?'. The Pikmin nodded. "Yup," it, or rather, _he, Johnny,_ said. "Wha'ss goin on? Why ae you a Pi... uh, a Pikuh... Pikmin (What's going on? Why are you a Pikmin?)" Dave asked. "A what?" Johnny asked in return. "A Pikmin! Y'know, these li'l plant things from the game series also called Pikmin!" Dave replied. "Huh... Never heard of 'em," Johnny said. "So that's what we are?"

"Wait, 'we'? What do you mean by..." Dave paused and looked at himself. Sure enough, he looked just like a Pikmin, with the same type of body as Johnny, but while Johnny was a Yellow Pikmin with ears, Dave was a Red Pikmin with a pointy nose. "Huh," he uttered. Dave and Johnny just stood there for a bit awkwardly, unsure of what to say. "...Well," Johnny eventually said, breaking the fragile veil of silence, "I guess we should try to find a way to turn back to people?" "Yeah, but... how?" Dave asked. "How should _I_ know?" Johnny retorted. "That was a rhetorical question!" Dave replied, annoyed. "OK, well, I guess let's just..." Johnny said, pausing. "...get out of here." "Sounds good," Dave said.

Johnny and Dave looked around. They were in a cave, like the one they were in earlier, but it was about sixty times larger than that one. There also weren't any flowers there. The cave looked like it was very old, with there being some small-ish holes in the roof from which sunlight shone down onto the ground. "If this cave is as similar to _that_ one as I think," Johnny said, looking up at the cave's walls. "then it won't be that hard to get out of here." He turned to Dave. "Follow me," Johnny ordered.

And so they went.

Johnny and Dave walked for a few minutes, talking as they went. "I'm just saying, if you _really_ wanna build tables, you've gotta study the Bible first!" Dave rambled on. "But what do they have to do with each other?!" "It's very simple! Jesus was a carpenter... and you know, Mario was originally supposed to be a carpenter, too! Playing _Super Mario Bros_ is experiencing a Japanese take on the stories shown in the Bible!" "W-What?!" "Just think about it! Mario is Jesus, Peach is God, and Toad is Jesus' 12 disciples! This is simple logic, man- wait did you hear that noise" Dave and Johnny looked over to their left, seeing an odd pink bug crawling up from the ground. "What is THAT?!" Johnny shouted in surprise. "It's one of those enemies from Pikmin! A Sheargrub, I think," Dave explained. "This kind can't hurt us." Johnny glared at the Sheargrub. It was small, pale, and cute. Its body was shaped like an oblong ribbed pink yolk with two soft-looking mandibles, forming a cute mouthy shape, and it had a pair of eyes, small and black, perfecting its adorableness.

"Aw~!" Johnny cooed, leaning down to it. "It's kinda cute!" Dave stifled a chuckle as he watched Johnny pet the Sheargrub. "You really like that Sheargrub, don'tcha?" Dave asked, slightly mockingly. "Yes, it's BEAUTIFUL!" Johnny answered loudly, hugging the Sheargrub (which looked slightly anxious at the whole situation). "This isn't really like you, y'know," Dave said. "Well, we're the only people here, and who knows how long we'll be like this!" Johnny replied, somehow both playfully and fearfully. "If we get back to being humans, will you even remember me loving this Sheargrub by that time?"

"Well," said Dave, "now that you say that, I am _definitely_ gonna remember this!" "Aw-" Johnny stopped for a second. "Wait... Do you hear that?" he asked. "Hear what?" Dave asked confusedly. "I can..." Johnny focused on something. "I can hear something... stomping? It's definitely somewhere near us."

Dave's eyes opened wide in realization and terror. _'_ _Something stomping?! Maybe it could be... Well, it makes sense, everything right now is pointing to us being in **that** world, so then it's a... a...'_ he thought, as he noticed a shadow pop from around a corner that Johnny was staring straight at. _'A...'_

 **ROOOAAAR!**

"A BULBORB!" he shouted, running into Johnny to get them out of the way of the giant beast that charged at them, trampling over the Sheargrub. "What the-!?" Johnny sputtered as they fell to the ground. "Run!" Dave shouted, hurredly fleeing from the Bulborb. "Wait! Dave-" Johnny halted as he heard the thing behind him turn around, prompting him to turn around and face it.

It was an odd creature. It had a body shaped like an egg on its side, being colored a pale peachy color on its more pointed end with the color transitioning to a robust red with white spots on the rounder side. It had two eyes that stood tall on stalks, easily the size of Johnny himself (as a Pikmin) twice over. It also had a mouth. Specifically, it had a _giant_ mouth, splitting its pointed front end in half, noticeably salivating. Then it noticed him.

"Oh, SHIT" Johnny yelled as he got up and just barely dodged it running at him, fleeing to the same direction he saw Dave go. After a few minutes of running, Johnny finally caught up to Dave. "Why'd you leave me there!?" Johnny asked irritatedly. Dave slightly flinched, shrugging softly. "S-Sorry... I mean, I told you to run, but..." He sighed. "Well, I thought you would go too! I didn't mean to leave you." Johnny groaned angrily, slightly facepalming. "At least I'm not dead," he said. "Yeah..." Dave replied.

They stood there awkwardly for a while, silent. "Hey," said Dave, breaking the silence. "I think I know what's going on here." "Really?" Johnny asked. "Then what is it?" Dave took a 'deep breath', explaining with "Well, I think that since we've become Pikmin, and there was a Sheargrub earlier, and also a Bulborb, which are all from the _Pikmin_ series of games, I feel like it's safe to say..." He paused for a moment.

"It's official. We're in the world of the _Pikmin_ games," he said.

"...Is that a good or bad thing?" Johnny asked. Dave thought for a moment. "A bad thing for _you_ , at least. You said you've never played a _Pikmin_ game before, so that means you don't know anything that's going on. The world of _Pikmin_ is like nature... It's merciless," Dave explained. "Just about anything can and will kill you along with everything you love, and then throw the corpses of you and your loved ones into a volcano, but not before eating them, pooping them out, and eating them again and puking them out and pooping on them!" Confused and mildly terrified, Johnny stared at Dave, and Dave noticed. "OK, that _may_ have been a _bit_ of an exaggeration, but it's still true! This world is _dangerous!_ " Dave clarified. "Yeah, I get it," Johnny replied, silently mourning for that Sheargrub.

They then walked for a few more minutes, eventually coming to the mouth of the cave.

"Oh! Finally!" Dave exclaimed joyfully. "I was getting so bored!" "Yeah, me too," Johnny replied. They looked outside at the vast world before them... or at least they would have done that if there wasn't grass coming up to their heads and blocking the view. "Uh, Dave, why is the grass so tall here?" Johnny asked, glancing over to Dave. "Didn't I tell you before? Pikmin are really short, like less than an inch tall," Dave explained. Johnny slightly flinched, speechless. "An... _inch?!_ " he shouted. "Yeah," Dave said flatly. "barely." "Wow... No wonder you say that this world is dangerous! When we're so small, basically anything can kill us! Seriously, if we're an inch tall, then that Bulborb must have been the size of a rabbit! So many things that would barely even hurt a human could tear us to pieces!" Johnny said panickedly. "Yeah, but this small size is also something good. We can survive falls from very high places, and we can be really stealthy," Dave replied, trying to be reassuring.

"Anyways, let's go," said Dave, walking into the thick veil of grass. Johnny followed closely behind him.

* * *

*100 lbs (45.35 kg)  
Word count: 3445  
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi there! Thank you for reading this. I've had this idea in my head for a while now, and now I'm finally writing it down and sharing it with you all. Please make sure to review this; I'd love the feedback!)  
11/13/17 EDIT: I changed the dollar amount to a more reasonable number. ($20 - $10)


	2. Flying Vegetables

Johnny and Dave walked through the grass, parting the tall bright green blades with each step. The sun was shining above them right in the middle of the sky, acting as a bright beacon in the middle of the familiarly blue sky. As they went, they didn't talk very much, opting instead to look at their surroundings. The environment was both new and old, since although it was just like a typical Earth landscape, they were viewing it from just an inch above the ground as Pikmin.

Johnny turned to Dave. "Hey, Dave," he said, drawing Dave's attention. "So you said we're inside of a video game now? How does that work?" "I have no idea, but I know that it's where we are now," Dave replied. "It probably has something to do with those flowers," he continued. "Yeah, duh," Johnny responded. Dave seemed to ignore him. "I didn't realize it at the time, but those were Candypop Buds. In the game, they're flowers that you can throw a Pikmin into and change its color to that of the Bud," Dave explained. "Oh..." Johnny murmured, eyes widening in realization.

"Ah," Dave uttered. "I just realized I haven't told you much about the Pikmin themselves. You see, there are many different types of Pikmin," he began to explain. "First, there are the Red Pikmin, which is the kind that I am. They are stronger than the other kinds, and are fire-resistant. Then there are Yellow Pikmin, which is what you are. They're lighter than the rest, which lets them be thrown higher, and they're also electricity-resistant. There's also Blue Pikmin, whi- OW!" Dave had walked headfirst into a tree. "Haha!" Johnny laughed. "Argh! _JOHNNY!_ " Dave shouted. "Why didn't you warn me!?" "I just thought it'd be funny to watch you walk into it~" Johnny replied.

Dave grumbled angrily. "Well, as I was saying, Blue Pikmi- AGH!" He looked down to his right leg, which was being gnawed on by a purple bug that looked like a Sheargrub. "Dammit! A Male Sheargrub!?" he shouted, readying a fist, and then...

 **Bam!** Dave punched the Sheargrub at full force, causing it to squeal in pain and let go of Dave's leg. Dave grabbed the dazed Sheargrub by the forehead, forcing his fingers into its head, and he slammed his head into it over and over. Slam. Slam. He continued until it finally went completely limp. He dropped its body on the ground, and what appeared to be a blue soul emanated from it.

Johnny was speechless. "...U-Um..." he stuttered. "That was a bit... _violent_ , don'tcha think?" he asked. Dave turned around to Johnny, looking slightly confused himself. "Yeah... It's like some sort of primal instinct just... overtook me..." he said, pausing for a while. "...but I guess it makes sense since Pikmin, like the rest of this world, are brutal creatures, even if they don't look the part."

Johnny silently and nervously looked back down to Dave's leg. It looked... not so good. It had noticeable bruises and tears and was even slightly bent from where the Sheargrub had clamped down, near the ankle. "We haven't been in this world for even a day and you're already hurt pretty bad," he said anxiously. "You weren't kidding when you said this world was dangerous." Dave nodded, closing his eyes. "Yeah," he said, laying a hand over his wounded leg. He winced slightly, resting against the tree. Johnny walked over and sat down on the ground next to him.

They sat under the tree for a minute. Johnny looked around, eventually looking up into the far-off branches of the tree. He listened to the wind blow relaxingly, felt a chill go up his spine, and he saw how the branches branched off. There was a vine coiled around the tree, going up and wrapping around a branch, and holding some odd yellow fruit close to the branch. He turned to Dave. "Dave, do you see that up there?" Johnny asked. "See what?" "That fruit thing on that branch there, look!" Dave looked up, trying to see what Johnny was talking about. "You mean that yellow thing tangled in that vine?" he asked. "Yes," Johnny answered. "Do you know what that is?" Dave squinted at it, thinking. "I think it's..." He trailed off for a moment. "...Um... I think it might be an... Onion?" Dave said hesitantly. "An _Onion_?" Johnny asked incredulously. "Yeah, an Onion. They basically act as shelter for Pikmin. I think that one up there is a Yellow Onion, which holds Yellow Pikmin," Dave explained. "I wonder why it ended up trapped in a vine..." Johnny looked back to the 'Onion'. "I'm gonna try and see if I can climb up there," he said as he grabbed onto the tree's thick bark. "Be careful," said Dave.

It took a bit, but Johnny managed to go up the tree. He climbed up, grasping and pushing off of the grooves in the bark, and after a few minutes he reached the branch. He walked carefully over it, making sure not to lose his balance and fall. The vine coiled over the branch, and Johnny followed it up to where it had trapped the Onion. He cautiously leaned over it, reaching out a hand to the Onion. He leaned more and more, feeling himself begin to slip off of the branch, but he continued, grabbing the vine for support. He leaned over a bit more, grabbing the vine with both hands. He looked at the Onion. It was round and yellow, looking like a yellow cherry with a flower instead of a stem. On the bottom, it had four black extensions arranged in the shape of a Y, from which some weird bright powder occasionally puffed out. Johnny brought his body close to the vine, climbing down a bit until he came 'face-to-face' with the Onion. He reached to it with his right hand, firmly grasping the vine with his left, and he laid his hand on the Onion's surface. It felt smooth and slightly squishy, like a slightly overripe peach without the fuzz.

Johnny brought his hand back, and he looked around. "How will I get this down..." he quietly said to himself. Nature decided to answer his question for him, as he didn't notice the vine stretching and thinning just above him. The vine tore, causing Johnny and the Onion to fall. Johnny yelled in fear, gripping onto the Onion. They neared the ground. Johnny's life flashed before his eyes. He remembered that one time where his mischievous brother unscrewed the cap for the salt shaker when he wasn't looking, causing him to dump all the salt on his food. He remembered the dare that Dave made that landed them in this scenario. He remembered when he learned the word 'remember'. But then it was interrupted by him almost falling from the now stationary Onion! It was hovering just above the ground, with small blue flames coming from the black extensions on its bottom, and the flower on top was spinning so fast the petals appeared to merge into a white blur.

Johnny let go of the Onion, falling on the ground. He stared up at it in awe. The Onion flew to be around five times higher than him, and the fire from the bottom-middle intensified as some sort of yellow tentacle appeared from inside the other three. The tentacles extended out to the ground, acting as a tripod on which the Onion's body stood. The flower's spin slowed down and the fire from its bottom went out, with an otherworldly light emanating in its place.

 **Clap Clap!** Startled, Johnny looked over to his left. Dave was standing up, limping slightly and clapping. "Nice job!" he said. "Uh, thanks," Johnny replied. He stood up, gazing at the Onion. It looked beautiful. Its roundness and its yellow color and flower were simply captivating. Its main fruit body seemed to contract slightly, and Johnny could almost think that he saw something that looked like a yellow seed pop out from it. At least, he almost thought he saw it until it hit him in the face. Then he definitely saw it.

"Agh! Ow..." he said melodramatically, sitting up from where he fell as Dave laughed loudly. Johnny glanced at Dave angrily for a moment; he looked back in front of him and noticed a yellow sprout with a leaf on top coming from the ground. _'A Pikmin,'_ he thought.

Johnny walked over to the sprout and grabbed it. He pulled firmly, flinging the freshly plucked Pikmin up through the air, and him with it. "Agh!" he yelled as he fell to the ground, bonking his head. "Darn it..." he muttered angrily, standing back up again. He turned to face the Pikmin. It looked like a regular Yellow Pikmin. It had two large ears on the side of its head and two beady eyes, and right on top of its head was a long, leaf-topped stem almost as long as the rest of its body. Its torso was shaped like a jelly bean from which four stick-like limbs stuck out. Its hands were regular, too, being just three fingers connected to a small, flat palm.

Johnny looked the Pikmin in the eyes. "...Hi," he said hesitantly. The Pikmin leaned its head to its right and made a high-pitched, confused-sounding hum. "HmM?" "... _Hi,_ " Johnny repeated. "A... Ai?" the Pikmin said, trying to copy what Johnny was saying. "Hi." "A... H-Hi." "Hi!" "Hi!" They continued saying "Hi" to each other for a while, only stopping when Dave interrupted with "Are you gonna say anything other than 'Hi' or what?" Johnny looked over to Dave. "We're just having a conversation!" he replied. "The word 'Hi' isn't a conversation!" Dave retorted. "Says who?" "Says _me_ , and I'm right!" said Dave confidently. Johnny sniggered slightly before turning back to the Pikmin. _'This Pikmin seems to have a quick grasp of sound. I wonder how good its language skills are,_ _'_ Johnny thought.

Johnny reached out and held the Pikmin's hand with his right while pointing with his left. "Hand," he said. "Ha...n," the Pikmin tried to repeat. "Hand," Johnny reiterated. "Han." "Han _d._ " "Han... Hand." "Mm-hm, hand." "Hand!" Johnny let go of the Pikmin's hand and pet its head. "Good, uh... Good boy, I guess!" The Pikmin made a high-pitched squeak in glee.

"Hey, this is cool and all, but could you stop with the language lesson?" Dave heckled. "Just a sec," Johnny replied. "At least see what's going on inside the Onion? I've always been curious about that since I first played _Pikmin_ ," said Dave. "OK, OK." Johnny turned away from the Pikmin, looking towards the Onion. He walked towards one of its yellow legs and laid his hand on it. It was soft, and it felt like a giant noodle of slightly moist ramen. Johnny grabbed the leg and started to climb up it. He was getting closer to the black nozzle-like extension that the leg was extending out of. He climbed into the small hole, fitting himself inside. Johnny was inside the Onion. It was quite dim, with light barely penetrating through the Onion; most of the light was from the holes that the legs poked through. The walls of the Onion were soft like its legs, and some sort of liquid seemed to slowly seep from some spots. It was also noticeably warm. It wasn't hot, just comfortably warm, almost like it was a house with air conditioning and soft, wet plant walls and it could fly. So not like a house at all. Johnny felt relaxed in the Onion. He felt like he was home...

* * *

Dave had been sitting underneath a tree for a while now. He was starting to get bored, and he wondered why Johnny was taking so long in the Onion. He got up, wincing at the pain it caused in his injured leg, and he limped over to the Onion, where the Yellow Pikmin that Johnny had plucked earlier was standing. "Hi!" it said as it noticed Dave. "Hey," said Dave. He looked over to the Onion, specifically at the black extension in the middle of its bottom, from which there was a soft blue light emanating. _'Maybe he can't come out until someone calls him. In the games, no Pikmin come from the Onion until you call them out,'_ Dave thought. He stood under the light and looked up. "Ah! Ow, ow!" he cried out, momentarily blinded by looking up into the bright light. "Alright, that's a bad idea..."

Dave stood under the light without looking at it this time, instead he tilted his head up slightly. "Hey, Johnny!" he yelled out, to no response. "Johnny!" No response. "Johnny!"

Dave yelled Johnny's name for a while, refusing to give up.

* * *

"...ny! Johnnyy! Hey, Johnny!"

"H-Huh?" Johnny mumbled, getting up from the Onion's floor. "Have I been sleeping...?" He stood up straight, stretching slightly. "Johnny!" He heard Dave yell. Johnny went over to a hole in the Onion. "Yeah?" he asked loudly. "Oh, finally, you're listening. Were you sleeping in there or something?" Dave asked. "Ah, yeah... It's really relaxing in here! Sorry!" Johnny responded. "Well, come out!" "OK!" Johnny crawled down and out of the Onion, squinting as the sun's bright rays of light assaulted his vision.

"Hi, Dave," said Johnny. "Hey, Johnny!" said Dave. "So, what's the inside of the Onion like?" "Oh, it's like this soft dome room that-" "Johnny!" Johnny looked over to his left. "Johnny!" the Pikmin repeated. "Oh," said Dave, "It must have learned your name when I was saying it earlier." Dave pointed to Johnny. "Johnny," he said. "Johnny," said the Pikmin. "Yeah. Johnny." "Johnny!" "Johnny~" They continued saying Johnny's name for a while, only stopping when Johnny pointed to Dave and said "Dave." "Dabe?" the Pikmin repeated. "Dave." "Dave..." "Dave!" "Dave!" They then said Dave's name for a while.

"OK, I feel like that's enough," said Dave as he started to walk away. "Oh, OK," said Johnny, walking over to Dave and gesturing for the Pikmin to follow them. "I think that there should also be a Red Onion somewhere nearby, since there was a Yellow Onion in that tree." They walked in the grass for a few minutes, Johnny and Dave talking all the while. "As I was saying, what's the inside of the Onion like?" asked Dave, prompting a detailed explanation from Johnny. "Ah, I see," said Dave. "Very interesting." "Yeah, I guess it is, and..." Johnny stopped. " _What_ is that weird flower?" he asked, pointing to a weird flower. It had a normal green stem about as long as two Pikmin, and it had normal white petals. The weird thing about it was that in the middle of the flower, there was a shiny, thick, and circular red object with a white '1' on it. "Oh, that's a Pellet Posy," Dave explained.

Johnny walked over to it. "A Pellet Posy, huh?" he asked. "Yeah, they're called that because of the pellet they have in their flower. The pellet can be taken down and brought to an Onion to make more Pikmin," Dave explained further. "Huh..." Johnny mumbled. "...Oh?" The Yellow Pikmin that Johnny had plucked earlier walked to be beside Johnny. It stared at the flower creepily, walking towards it slowly without taking its eyes off of it. It walked forward until it was touching the stem, at which point it began to climb up the stem, still staring directly at the flower. When it reached the flower, it started to headbutt it from the back, **Whack! Whack!** Whacking until the flower broke and the pellet fell down to the ground. The Pikmin climbed back down from the now-drooping stem and walked to the pellet. It picked up the pellet and started to walk off with it. "It must be going to the Yellow Onion," said Dave.

"WAIT AREN'T WE WALKING AROUND TO FIND A RED ONION!?" he screamed, causing the Pikmin to stop and look over to Dave and then Dave snatched the pellet right out of its hands and ran off. "Huh!? Wait, Dave!" said Johnny, grabbing the Pikmin by the hand and running to follow Dave. They ran and ran for around two minutes, somehow unable to catch Dave even with his injured leg, eventually reaching an area akin to a clearing, where the grass was much shorter than usual. There was another Onion, but the main bulb on top was red instead of yellow. It was a Red Onion, and Dave was running right under it. He raised the pellet he was carrying into the light, and the pellet began to glow blue. It hovered in place for a second, and then it flew into the Onion, slightly pushing it off the ground. The Onion's bulb swelled a bit, but then contracted as it shot two red seeds out from its top.

Johnny approached Dave from behind. "Hey!" "Ah!" Dave said, startled. "Ah, um, sorry about that. I was just eager to find this Red Onion. You see, since Pikmin can instinctively carry a pellet to the Onion, I realized that I could find this Red Onion by holding the Pellet," he explained. "Yeah, I know that sounds like a terrible excuse, but it's true! After all, how would I have found this Onion without it being so?" Johnny sighed. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. "It doesn't mean you're not a jerk..." he muttered. "Huh?" "Oh, nothing."

Dave turned his head to look at a leg of the Red Onion. "I know you already described it to me, but I've just gotta see the inside of the Onion for myself. Besides, I'll have to get in it anyway," he said, turning back to Johnny for a moment. "Hm?" Johnny hummed confusedly, cocking his head to the side in confusion. "What for?" "Well," Dave started to explain, "the night is far too dangerous for Pikmin to stay out. We'll need to stay in the Onion overnight to avoid being eaten by nocturnal predators." "Huh." "Well, see ya later!" Dave headed to a leg of the Onion and climbed up it, going into the Onion. "Bye," Johnny said and waved.

As Dave entered the Onion, Johnny turned his attention to the two sprouts that had came from the Onion. "Hey," he said to the Unnamed Yellow Pikmin, drawing its attention. He stepped over to one of the sprouts. "Pull," he said as he tugged on the stem, pulling the Red Pikmin out from the ground. He then grabbed UYP by the hand and put its hand over the stem of the other Red Pikmin's sprout. "Put your _Hand_ on the _Stem_ ," he said, also pointing to the stem as he said it. "And _pull._ " He mimicked the motions of pulling just to be sure. UYP nodded slightly and started to tug on the sprout, causing the Red Pikmin to be pulled out of the ground. UYP didn't have good technique for pulling it out, though. It was pulling directly up, awkwardly forcing the Red Pikmin's head out of the ground in a slightly painful-looking manner. "Wait, wait, wait!" Johnny cried out, grabbing the stem. "You're gonna rip it if you pull it like that. You gotta pull it like this!" He took UYP's hands off the stem and pulled the stem for it, correctly this time. The Red Pikmin flew out from the ground. "Cool," Johnny said as he turned around to face the two Pikmin he had plucked. The first one looked like a normal Red Pikmin, having a very similar appearance to Dave, but the second one had a slightly malformed nose, likely from UYP's attempt at plucking it from the ground.

It was then that Johnny had an idea. He walked over to the Red Pikmin, pointed to its nose, looked over to UYP and said "Nose."

* * *

Dave entered the Onion, eager to see what it was like for himself. The Red Onion had a round, dome-like interior like Johnny described. The walls were colored a robust mauve, and they were just transparent enough to let in light to see, but it was dim. Dave felt the wall, and he noticed it was slightly sticky with some sort of liquid. _'Ew, what is this stuff?'_ he thought in mild disgust. He raised a liquid-coated hand to his nose and sniffed it. "Hmm..." he hummed. Its smell was odd, almost smelling sweet, yet it also smelled like... grass. He started to wonder what it was and began to stand, but he was interrupted by a stabbing pain in his leg.

Dave looked down at his injured leg, then back to the sticky, nectar-like liquid in his hand. "Hm... Maybe..." He squatted down and rubbed his hand on his leg, and he felt the pain weaken as he coated on the liquid. "Ahhh..." he sighed softly. He looked at his leg. He saw the tears in it closing and sealing using the liquid applied, and the bruises and bends cleared and straightened out. "Woah."

* * *

Word count: 3603

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi again! I planned to make this chapter longer, but I noticed it was already pretty long and also I got writer's block. I'm going to try to make every chapter at least 3000 words long. Also, I feel like this chapter was a bit... repetitive? I think I structured a lot of my sentences similarly. Also, if you're wondering, I'll be uploading chapters weekly every Friday. Again, please make sure to review this, and thank you for reading.)


	3. Three's a Crowd (of Vegetables)

It was a slightly atypical, somewhat unpeaceful spring afternoon; birds were being pollinated, flowers were chirping, and on this specific day, the families of Jonathan 'Johnny' Johnson and David 'Dave' Davis were incredibly worried due to the two having mysteriously disappeared the previous night. Johnny's brother, Joel 'JoJo' Johnson, testified that Johnny had said he had been challenged by Dave to stay in a cave near the Johnson residence for ten (10) dollars. "Uh, [on the day he disappeared] he was saying that Dave bet him ten bucks he couldn't stay in that cave near our house overnight or something? I don't really remember." Various members of the Davis family said likewise. Dave's father, a man also named David Davis, said that "[Dave] said somethin' about makin' a bet with that friend of his, I think." The cave was searched, but Johnny and Dave weren't found. Some odd rainbow-colored flowers were found, but the investigators didn't think they were of any importance.

* * *

Joel Johnson, age 13 and now the only child to the Johnson family was standing at the mouth of the cave that Johnny and Dave were said to have gone into. It was around 5 PM, and he was preparing to try to find out why Johnny and Dave disappeared. He walked into the cave, with a flashlight firmly in hand. He looked around at the cave's interior, feeling slightly nostalgic. He had always liked to play in the cave as a child, doing things like using his hand to create shadows in the shape of things like rabbits on the cave walls. He especially liked to do it just because of how his parents were always telling him not to go into the cave because it was "dangerous".

He walked further into the cave, footsteps echoing. He continued walking for a few minutes before coming across a small room with various bright-colored flowers that were big enough to sit on. They were colored blue, purple, white, gray, and pink. The flowers were shaped like normal flowers, each of them having five petals that lay close to the ground, except for the gray and pink ones, which had petals that curled up into a cup shape.

Joel walked over to the gray flower because it was the one closest to his favorite color, black. He was going through a bit of an edgy phase at the time. Anyway, he looked into it, slightly putting a hand inside. He leaned into it. Then he fell inside. "Agh!" he yelled as he tumbled face-first into the flower. Then the petals closed up, trapping him inside. He struggled from inside for a bit, but after a few seconds, he started to slow down, and he stopped...

The flower slowly opened up its petals, revealing nothing inside, as if there were never anything or anyone inside.

* * *

 _'...'_

 _'...'_

 _'...!'_

 _'...?!'_

 _'...wh...What? I can't move... It's dark...'_

 _'Is this what happened to Johnny and Dave? Is this Hell?'_

 _'C'mon, move...!'_

 _...I really can't move...'_

 _'Wait, I can... I can almost move my ... eyebrows ... a bit...?'_

 _'Maybe I can move the rest of my head...'_

 _'Ah! Yes! I'm moving my head! Now let's try to get the rest of my body free...'_

Joel struggled to get out of whatever thing was keeping him trapped. He managed to get his head up above... the ground. _'What the...'_ He tried to work his arms out, and when he did, he noticed something odd.

 _'Why is my arm a gray stick?!'_

His right arm was a long, thin, and light gray appendage with three 'fingers' on the end. He looked to his left arm, which looked exactly the same as his right: a gray stick.

 _'What the hell is going on here?!'_

He put his hands flat against the ground and pushed off of it, pushing himself out of the ground. He looked down at his body.  
His body was dark gray and angular like a rock, with his limbs awkwardly sticking out like firm noodles. His legs and feet looked just like his arms and hands, except they were a bit shorter and the feet stuck out more than the hands did. As he looked at his new body in interest and slight fear, he noticed something move from the corner of his eye. He looked up, and he saw a tall, gray stem extending from the top of his head. The stem had a bright green leaf on the tip, swaying slightly with each movement Joel made.

Joel took his eyes off himself and looked around at his environment. It was a cave like the one he was in earlier, except it was a _lot_ bigger. It had some tiny-looking holes in the ceiling that light shone out from. The ground was quite dirty, especially since it was made out of dirt, and some small pebbles littered the area. It was clear to Joel that this was just a small bit of whatever cave this was, since there looked to be some sort of hallway leading out into the rest of the cave system.

He took a step, and he fell over on his 'face'. Clearly he would need to learn how to balance in this form... He pushed himself up, making sure to keep balanced. He took another step, hesitantly doing it this time, and he took another. He was starting to feel a bit more confident in his ability to walk now.

Joel slowly walked over to the hallway. He stepped around a corner, walked a bit, and then he found some sort of red... thing. It was round and had some circular white spots on it. There was also some sort of pink stain on the ground, but Joel didn't give it much attention. He walked up to it, and he hesitantly touched it. It then started to move. _'Huh!?'_ It was actually the rear end of a large animal! It turned around, looked around for a moment, and then it spotted Joel, who was petrified with terror. It then opened its giant mouth and walked closer to Joel. _'Ah! Uh, oh crap!'_ Joel ran to the side as the creature tried to take a bite out of him, and he ran away from it, not really caring which direction he was going in. He ran and ran and ran until his legs got tired. He looked to his behind. The creature wasn't chasing him. "Phew..." Joel sighed.

Joel looked around at the part of the cave that he had ran into. It looked like a cave. There were various large passages and an occasional stone pillar here and there. _'Wait... Oh no, I think I'm lost,'_ Joel realized. _'I don't know the way anyway, but I have absolutely no idea where I am.'_ He started to walk aimlessly. He walked for a couple minutes, only stopping once he saw something move in his peripheral vision. _'Huh?'_ He looked to his left, and he saw some sort of small pink... thing. It was round and looked like an egg's yolk, if yolk were pink and had eyes and a mouth. It was burrowing out of the ground and just... wiggling around. Joel took a hesitant step forward, causing the yolk thing to notice him. It started to wiggle towards him in an almost threatening manner. Joel leaned down and put his hand underneath the thing to pick it up. He picked it up, noticed the pointy fingers on his new form's hands digging into the thing's skin, and... it went limp. It died. Joel could almost even see a soul come out of it. _'Oh FUCK this thing is fragile!'_ he thought panickedly as he dropped the thing's corpse onto the ground.

Joel looked around, worried. _'Oh god is this gonna be like how if you approach a baby bear in the wild the mom's gonna see and attack you? Oh please don't let there be some sort of giant mom for this bug thing oh no'_ He drooped down slightly, paralyzed in fear. He stayed there for a minute with his eyes shut tight in fear. Eventually, he gathered the courage to stand up straight and open his eyes, and he saw that there was still nobody there except for him, and also the yolkesque thing's corpse. He leaned down to the lifeless body and picked it up, careful not to tear it. _'Aww, sorry...'_ he thought guiltily. He looked at it for a second, but then he was overcame with some sort of instinct, and he started to carry the body to some place that he didn't know, but he also did.

He carried the body for a couple minutes, eventually reaching his destination. It was some sort of gray fruit in some dark corner of a room with a few crystals in it. He laid the body down in front of the fruit. _'...What was that? Why did I just... go here?'_ he wondered. He looked over to the fruit. _'Why's it in the dark? Hmm... Maybe something will happen if I put it into the light.'_ He went over to the fruit and pushed it out of the dark, putting it underneath a beam of light coming from a hole in the roof. It immediately came to life, with the flower that was on top spinning fast, **fwipfwipfwipfwipfwip** , and some fire shot out from its bottom, lifting it into the air. Joel stepped back a bit, mesmerized. The fruit floated in the air for a few seconds, but then some yellow tentacles shot out of it and connected it to the ground, like legs, if legs were yellow tentacles. The fire weakened, and it was replaced by a soft blue light radiating from its place. Joel stared at it for a second, still mesmerized. The main bulb of the gray-tentacle-flower-fruit-thing contracted as it shot out a small, round, gray seed with a leaf on its top end. The seed floated down to the ground and embedded itself in it, except for the leafed tip, which stuck tall out of the ground. _'Woah,'_ Joel thought silently.

Slightly hesitating, Joel stepped towards the half-buried gray seed. He raised a hand over to its stem and poked it. It twitched slightly. Joel took a step back. _'Is this thing... the same kind of thing that I've become?'_ He looked up to his stem. _'The stem on my head and the one on that thing in the ground look the same...'_ Joel put his hand back on the stem. It was smooth and felt like a plant, probably because it was a plant. He grabbed the stem and started to pull, but he stopped, hearing some sort of faint stomping and growling coming from just outside the 'room' he was in. He looked over to his left. Off in the distance, he could vaguely see something moving... something... big, and red with... white spots? His eyes opened wide in fear as he realized what was in the distance. He froze, hoping it wouldn't see him. It turned around. Joel continued to stand still. _'Don't see me, don't see me, PLEASE don't see me...!'_ It started to walk towards the room that Joel was in. _'Maybe it still hasn't seen me yet?'_ It walked closer, clearly heading straight for him. _'Oh no._ _'_

It saw him.

It walked closer and closer, looking bigger and bigger. Joel managed to get himself to stop standing still, and he looked around for something to help him out of this situation, eyes darting around the room. Rocks... Those won't help much. Crystals... There's no way he could make that into a weapon in time. The dirt... How could he even use that? It was getting closer, stomping rhythmically with every step it made. He looked over to the gray fruit, feeling instinct begin to overcome him. He ran over to one of its tentacle legs and quickly climbed up it, heading for the main fruit on top. He came close, squishing himself under some sort of black mouth-like thing that the tentacle was coming from, and he entered the fruit. He looked around, starting to regain full control of himself.

The fruit's insides were dark and gray, and Joel could barely see. The floor and walls were soft and squishy like the tentacle he used for getting inside. It was also much warmer than the cold, rocky cave outside of it. _'I hope this acts as protection...'_ Joel could hear the large creature stomping around outside the fruit. It seemed to stop for a moment, and Joel heard some sort of faint sniffing from underneath him. He'd have held his breath if he had lungs in his new form. It was quiet for a moment, with Joel's quickly beating heart being the only sound... then he heard the creature stomping away.

Joel sighed, resting against the wall of the fruit. _'That was close!...'_ He lied there for a moment, feeling his heart slowly go back to a normal beat. He slowly stood back up from his sitting position, and looked at the small entrance from which he came into the fruit. _'I wonder if anything happened to that sprout...?'_ he thought as he started to walk over to it. Then the fruit shook suddenly, making Joel fall onto its floor. _'Ow! What the...!?'_ He started to get up, only to fall back over as the fruit seemed to shake slightly and raise, causing what was like a more intense feeling of when you go up in an elevator. The fruit then spun, throwing Joel around inside it. He would definitely be throwing up if he could. He dug his hand into the floor as he felt himself being thrown again in an attempt to stop. It didn't work. He again slammed into a wall. He quickly looked to the entrance, but it was shut tight. Joel flew into another wall and tumbled onto the floor. He felt the fruit shift slightly and prepared to slam into a wall... but it had stopped rocking around.

Hesitantly, Joel got up from the floor. He walked up to the fruit's slightly transparent wall and tried to look through it. It looked very dark except for one spot which seemed to be next to a bright light source. The view was slightly clearer around the bright light, and Joel could see it was a round, white ball against a black background... with a few smaller specks of light... wait... _'Are those... stars?'_ Joel dropped to his knees.

 _'What the fuck.'_

This was already a bizarre world he was in, but... flying into space was too much. Joel's body fell to the floor. He hoped this was just some sort of weird dream. He closed his eyes, hoping he would wake up as a human again, and went to sleep.

* * *

Dave was in the Onion and staring in disbelief at his leg. Well, he was actually staring at what had happened to his leg. After applying some sort of nectar secreted by the Onion's wall to his injured right leg, it healed completely, even though it had been torn and bent pretty bad from a Sheargrub attack. He walked out of the Onion, climbing down the yellow tentacle. "Hey! Johnny!" he shouted. Johnny, the Unnamed Yellow Pikmin that he plucked, and two Red Pikmin looked at him. "What is it? I'm kinda in the middle of teaching these guys the word 'nose'," said Johnny. "You mentioned something about the walls of the Onion being sticky, right?" Dave asked. "Yeah, I think so." "Well, it's actually some sort of healing nectar! Look, it healed my leg."

Dave stuck out his right leg. "Huh!?" Johnny uttered. "It's all better?!" "Yeah, I just told you, you know," answered Dave. "How?!" "I just rubbed some of that nectar on it, of course." Johnny stared at the leg for a moment.

"Are you just gonna stare or what?" Dave asked.

"Oh! Um," Johnny stammered. "Sorry, I just... I'm _amazed,_ " he said. "This really is a weird world we're in now..." he continued. Dave nodded slightly. "Yeah." He looked over to the other Pikmin. "Y'know, I wonder if we should give these guys names," he said as he stared momentarily at the Unnamed Yellow Pikmin That Johnny Had Plucked Earlier That Day. Johnny looked over to the Pikmin as well. "Hmm, yeah..." Dave walked over to UYPTJHPETD. "Maybe let's name this one something like... Alex?" he said uncertainly, gazing into its eyes creepily. "No," said Johnny. "Why not?" asked Dave. "Because Alex is already my mom's name, and I don't want to name this thing after her. It also doesn't seem like an 'Alex' to me anyway," Johnny explained. "Hm," Dave hummed.

"How about... Johnny Jr.?"

"NO! I'm not its dad! And I'm already saving the name Johnny Jr. for my actual son when I grow up and have one!" Johnny rejected. "OK, fair enough," said Dave. "How about you let me come up with the name instead?" Johnny asked. "Sure," said Dave.

Johnny looked at UYPTJHPETD. _'Hm, it has really big ears... but I can't just name it "Ears", can I? Maybe I'll name it the Spanish word for ear? But what's Spanish for ear...?'_ Johnny thought for a while, trying to remember what little Spanish he learned from school. _'I think it's... something I don't remember. Darn. But I know yellow is "amarillo", but that's too long. Maybe I could shorten it to Amito? Yeah, that sounds good.'_ "I'll call it Amito," said Johnny. "Amito, huh?" Dave repeated, looking at the newly named Amito. He pointed right at Amito's face. "Amito," he said. Amito looked around for a moment before pointing at itself. "Amito?" it said hesitantly. Dave nodded. "Amito," he said. "Amito..." said Amito. One of the Red Pikmin turned to Amito. "Amito," it said.

"Oh yeah, we gotta name these two, too," said Dave. He looked at the Red Pikmin That Had Said Amito's Name. "Hmm..." he hummed in thought at RPTHSAN. "Keith, maybe...? Nah..." he muttered quietly. "Hmm... Ross...o? Rosso?" He pointed to RPTHSAN. "Rosso," he said. Rosso pointed at itself, and said "Rosso." Rosso and Dave did the same thing that Amito did when it was named for a minute. "OK, so we've named these two," Johnny said as he gestured to Amito and Rosso, "but what about that last one?" He pointed to the Unnamed Red Pikmin. Dave walked over to URP and thought for a moment. "I don't really have any ideas for this one..." he said. "Maybe Zach? But something about that seems... wrong. Like somehow that name is already chosen? Hmmm..."

Dave thought for a few seconds.

"Um... Screw it, I'll just name it 'tre', Italian for 'three'." he said awkwardly. "No!" Johnny retorted. "That's too lazy!" Dave shrugged. "It's all I can think of. Do _you_ have anything better?" he asked. "Yeah," Johnny replied. "Then tell me." said Dave. "Uh... Red...uh, gee... Oh! I know! Reggie!" Johnny responded. Dave looked at him blankly. "Reggie?" he asked. "Yes, Reggie," said Johnny. "That's no name for a _Red_ Pikmin!" said Dave. "Why not?" "It just isn't."

Dave looked back to URP. "Maybe... Uh..." He paused for a while and thought. "...Fuoco," he eventually said, pointing to the Pikmin. "F-Fuogo," it repeated. "Fuoco." said Dave. "Fuoco..." said Fuoco.

"Alright, now that we've named them," Johnny interrupted, "could we start doing something else? I'm getting bored." Dave looked over to Johnny. "Just a minute," said Dave. Johnny sighed. "Well, _I'm_ gonna go. See ya!" he said as he began to walk off to the Yellow Onion. "See you," said Dave.

Johnny walked for a few minutes through the grass. There wasn't really much of interest along the way, save for a few colorful Pellet Posies. After having walked for a few minutes more, he eventually reached the Yellow Onion. He stopped momentarily when he saw it, instinctively letting out a sigh of relief. He started to walk to the Onion. "Hi Johnny!" a high-pitched voice said. Johnny stopped and turned around, and he saw a familiar face. Two big ears and beady eyes... "Oh, Amito," said Johnny. "Hi." "Hi!" Amito enthusiastically repeated. "What are you doing here?" Johnny asked. Amito tilted its head and made a confused hum sound. "Oh, right, you don't know what that means..." said Johnny.

Amito walked back a bit and made some sort of gesture with its arms. "Huh?" said Johnny. Amito repeated the gesture a few times. It extended its arms fully, pointing them towards Johnny and then in the opposite direction. _'Is it trying to tell me to follow it?'_ Johnny thought. He started to walk towards it, and it started to walk off somewhere. Johnny followed closely behind.

They walked for a couple minutes, eventually coming to... a Bulborb's corpse, laying on its side. But this Bulborb wasn't a giant Bulborb like the one Johnny had encountered in the cave, instead, it was a small Bulborb around the size of three Pikmin. Amito ran over in front of the corpse and started to try to pick it up, but it seemed it was too heavy to lift. "I guess you want me to help you carry this thing, huh?" Johnny asked rhetorically, walking right next to the corpse. He put his hands underneath the corpse, and he could almost lift it with the help of Amito...!

They tried to carry the Bulborb off to the Onion, but as the minutes passed and the Bulborb had barely been moved an inch, it became clear that Johnny and Amito could not carry it. At least, they couldn't carry it very quickly.

Johnny grumbled in annoyance and let go of the Bulborb. He walked around it for a second, trying to come up with some way to make carrying it faster. _'We clearly can't lift it_ _up,'_ he thought, _'but maybe we could just... roll it?'_ He put his hands on the Bulborb and started to push, and it actually started rolling! It wasn't fast, but it was definitely better than before. Amito made an excited-sounding noise, walked to Johnny's side, and started to push with him. They would surely get the Bulborb to the Onion quickly now!

Sure enough, they managed to get to the Yellow Onion in around two minutes, much faster than Johnny expected! He looked up at the Onion's round bulb for a moment, feeling some sort of instinctual glee in its presence. He was so close to it now...

"Hey!"

Johnny turned around in surprise and saw a familiar Red Pikmin standing a few strides away. "Ah, Dave! You surprised me," said Johnny. "What are you doing _here?_ " Dave shrugged slightly and said "I got bored and wondered what you were up to." "Huh." Johnny turned back to the Bulborb only to realize that Amito had pushed it into the Onion's light already. The Bulborb glowed a slight blue before being sucked up into the Onion, like a speck of dust being effortlessly sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. The Onion's bulb contracted and expanded slightly as it shot out three yellow seeds that fell to the ground slowly and embedded themselves into the ground.

"Oh," Johny uttered.

"Nice," Dave said.

Amito walked over to one of the sprouts and pulled on it, and it went much more smoothly than before, with the Pikmin being quickly flung from the dirt and landing directly on its feet. Amito turned around. "Amito pull," it said confidently.

Amito immediately walked in front of the Pikmin it plucked and thought for a second. Amito pointed to it, saying "Tomi." The Pikmin looked behind itself for a second. It hesitantly pointed to itself "T-...Tomi?" Amito nodded. "Mm! Tomi!" "Tomi."

"Oh! Look, Dave!" Johnny said excitedly. "Amito named another Pikmin all on its own!" Dave looked at Johnny sarcastically somehow. "Didn't it just reverse the last two syllables of 'Amito'? A-mi-to, To-mi? I get that you're proud of Amito, and it's a Yellow Pikmin like you, and it's interesting how it's intelligent enough to make an 'original' name, but I feel like you're overreacting a bit."

"C'mon, Dave! _You're_ the one who's played the _Pikmin_ games here, and you yourself said that you've always been curious about the inside of an Onion. Wouldn't you also be curious about Pikmin intelligence?" said Johnny. "...Pikmintelligence?" he continued. Dave looked down to the ground. "Uh..."

"Johnny!"

Johnny and Dave looked forward and saw Amito pointing at Johnny, with Tomi standing just behind Amito. "D-Dj-Johnny," Tomi said hesitantly. Johnny pointed at himself. "Johnny," he said. "Oh, we're doingthis again?" asked Dave. He pointed to himself and said "Well, I'm Dave. See ya!" He walked off.

"Oh," Johnny uttered again.

* * *

Word count: 4250

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi again again! Sorry about the abrupt ending, but I feel like I wasn't really going anywhere and then I ended up making this chapter four thousand words long, so... Yeah. Wanna know the meanings of the Pikmin names? Even if you don't, I'm gonna tell you. You already know Amito (and Tomi)'s meaning, Rosso is Italian for 'red', and Fuoco is Italian for 'fire'. I never got a chance to mention it, but Fuoco is the one that Johnny plucked, and Rosso is the one that Amito tried to pluck and it has a slightly bent nose. I'm slightly regretting giving them names, though. I feel like it's not something Dave would do if he were a real person who knows what the Pikmin games are. Also, I hope the way I implemented Joel into the story was interesting and made sense. In case you're confused, this is all still the first day, even though Joel became a Pikmin a day after Johnny and Dave. Why? Well, Johnny and Dave became Pikmin during the night, so there wasn't any sunlight, but Joel became a Pikmin during the late afternoon. Please remember to review this, and, once again, thank you for reading.)


	4. Vegetable Reunion

_'zzz...'_

 _'...hm...?'_

 _'Huh...? Where am I...?'_

 _'What's this... grayish room?'_

 _'The floor's really squishy... Wait.'_

Joel realized where he was. _'No.'_ It wasn't a dream. The squishy floor, the barely see-through walls, the... weird creatures sleeping on the floor? _'Huh? This must be that fruit I fell asleep in... So when did these things get here?'_ There were around ten to fifteen plant-like creatures lying down on the floor of the fruit, which also seemed to be a bit larger to accommodate the extra creatures. Half of the creatures was yellow with big ears, and the other half was red with long, pointy noses. All of the creatures had long stems coming out of their heads, one each, and the stems of some had leaves, but the others had buds. Joel stared at the creatures for a moment, then looked up to the leaf-tipped stem on his head.

 _'Are these... the same kind of creature as I am?'_

Joel walked up to one of the red creatures, one with a bud on the stem. He leaned over it, slightly raising a hand.

"Uh, hi?"

"AH!" Joel yelped and turned around. In front of him stood one of the yellow creatures, specifically one with a bud on its stem. Its head was tilted slightly to its right. "What are _you_ doing here?" it asked. Joel was speechless. The creature stood there for a moment. "What, can't you talk? Or maybe you just don't know English..." it continued, putting a hand to its 'chin' and leaning forwards slightly. _'...Y'know, how_ do _I talk in this form anyway?'_ Joel thought. "M...Mmm," he said hesitantly. The yellow creature blinked. "Is that all you can say? 'Mmm'?" it asked. Joel stood silently.

Joel heard a yawn come from the red creature behind him.

" **Yawn...** Ah, what's going on?"

Joel turned around and saw the red creature stand up from the floor. It looked at him for a second. "...Why's a Rock Pikmin here?" it asked. _'A "Rock Pikmin"?'_ Joel thought. He continued to stand silently, staring uncomfortably at the red creature. "Mn... W... R...Rock... Pikmin?" he said, stammering and raising his left hand over his 'mouth'. "What?" he continued. The yellow creature hummed slightly. "So at least you know the word 'what'," it said. Joel looked back to the yellow creature. "Uh-...Ee...Y-Yeah," he said hesitantly. "Seriously, why's it here?" the red creature asked.

"It knows 'Yeah', too!" the yellow creature said, ignoring the red one. It paused for a moment after saying that, eyes widening slightly. "Hold up," it said. "If this Pikmin knows English, it must have been a person like us! After all, the only thing that anyone else knows is that we disappeared after I got dared to stay in a cave overnight. Maybe this guy is- or rather _was_ ,- part of a search team or something?" Joel and the red creature gasped slightly. _'Did this thing just say "a person like us" and "we disappeared after I got dared to stay in a cave overnight"!? Could they be Johnny and Dave!?'_ Joel thought. "That makes _perfect sense_ , Johnny!" the red creature said. Joel stared at the yellow creature, at _Johnny_. "J-Johnny!?" he nearly screamed out. Johnny sighed slightly. "Yup," he said, looking at Joel.

Joel turned towards the red creature and gestured towards it. "And... Dabe-, uh, Dave?" he said. "Mm-hm," the red creature, _Dave_ said. "And who're you?" he continued. "Wait, let me guess!" Johnny cried out. "I think I have an idea! I guess that this guy went into the gray flower, since his rocky body seems pretty dark-colored, and he probably approached it because it was his favorite color... And he froze up for a second when I surprised him... And he's probably either part of some sort of search team or someone close to one of us... Favorite color's gray and he freezes up when surprised... Hmm... It's definitely my brother, Joel." Joel looked at Johnny blankly. _'Is that seriously so notable about me?! Liking the color gray and stiffening up when I'm surprised!?'_ he thought.

"Your brother Joel, huh?" Dave said, walking up to Joel. "...Yeah," said Joel. "Y'know, Joel," said Dave, "I've seen you a few times at Johnny's house and heard about you, but I've never actually _met_ you... I've always wondered why you wore all black, though. Aside from the fact your hair was more of a pompadour than emo bangs, you looked just like you hopped out of 2006!" Joel stepped back a step. "I didn't come here to be judged for my fashion choices," he said. "Yeah, back off a bit, Dave!" said Johnny. "Joel doesn't look emo!"

 _'Yeah! You tell him, Johnny!'_ Joel thought.

"He just looks like someone who washed his clothes in a tar pit!"

 _'NO DON'T TELL HIM THAT!"_

"Bwahahahaha!" Dave laughed loudly like a madman and fell to his knees, clutching his stomach like it was going out of style. "JOHNNY!" Joel yelled. Johnny started to laugh and, through his laughter, managed to sputter out "S-Sorry, Joel! I just couldn't resist it! Haha!"

Joel sighed angrily and turned away from Johnny, looking to the various creatures laying on the floor. It looked like some of them were starting to wake up, clearly awakened by Joel's shouting and Dave's laughing. Joel glanced back to Johnny. "What _are_ these things?" he asked. "Oh, they're Pikmin, from the _Pikmin_ games," said Johnny. _'Hold up, games?'_ Joel thought silently. "The red ones are Red Pikmin, the yellow ones are Yellow Pikmin, and, as you know, you're a Rock Pikmin."

Dave got up from the floor, starting to calm down with his laughing. "Ahah... Ah, you're teaching Joel about the kinds of Pikmin now?" he asked. "Yeah, Dave," replied Johnny, who then seemed to remember something. "...I just realized you've never gotten a chance to tell me about the other kinds of Pikmin besides Reds and Yellows."

"I haven't?" Dave asked, thinking. "...Oh yeah, I was starting to tell you about Blue Pikmin when that Sheargrub attacked me," he continued. "Well, tell me! Or rather, tell us," said Johnny.

"OK, well, Rock Pikmin are, of course, rocky. They're unable to be squashed and can only attack enemies by running into them, or at least that's the only way they can attack in _Pikmin 3._ I'm not sure when it's about actually being in this universe," Dave explained. "And speaking of _Pikmin 3_ , there are also Winged Pikmin, which are small and pink. They're fragiler than other Pikmin types, but they're also more mobile. Mobiler? Anyway, they can fly high up to get to faraway places."

"And what about Blue Pikmin?" asked Johnny.

"Well, Blue Pikmin are able to breath underwater using gills. Or... is it a mouth? It was never really made clear... And I think it said in _Pikmin 3_ that they have gills on their _cheeks_ , but maybe that means the inside of their cheek, like the side of the mouth? Well, that isn't really important anyway. Also, Blue Pikmin can swim, of course."

"Hey, wait, I don't really know about Red or Yellow Pikmin yet!" said Joel. "Ah, well, Red Pikmin are fireproof and Yellow Pikmin are shock-resistant," Dave explained.

"Are there any more types of Pikmin? There were seven flowers in that cave and all," Johnny asked.

"Oh yeah, there are Purple Pikmin, which are stronger and slower than other types, and White Pikmin, which are small and able to see underground treasure."

"Hm," Joel hummed in intrigue. "Johnny, didn't you say these things are from video games? How does that wor-"

"Hi!"

"AH!" Joel yelped and turned around again. Behind him was another Yellow Pikmin. It looked like Johnny, but it seemed a bit more... childish, more innocent.

"...Hi?" Joel said hesitantly.

The Yellow Pikmin pointed to itself. "I'm Amito," it said.

"Oh, hi, Amito," said Johnny. "...Huh...?" Joel uttered.

Johnny looked over to Joel. "It's Amito. It's just a normal Yellow Pikmin, not someone who used to be a human," he explained. "Uh, OK," said Joel.

Joel looked at Amito. "...Hi, Amito," he said hesitantly. He pointed at himself. "I'm Joel."

"Joel..." said Amito. It pointed to him. "Yer Joel."

"...Yeah," said Joel, "I'm Joel."

"Oh, cool," interjected Johnny. "Now you two know each other, kinda!" Joel turned to Johnny. "Yeah, I guess so." He looked around the room he was in. Many of the Pikmin that had been sleeping were getting up, some seeming to face each other and talk... about something. The room wasn't bright, but it was less dim than it was yesterday. The sun's light shone through the slightly transparent plant walls. Joel turned back to face Johnny.

"Just what is this thing we're in?" he asked. "This is the Onion," Johnny answered. "...This thing is called an Onion? Doesn't seem very oniony to me," said Joel. "Yeah, it's called an Onion. It's basically like a mobile home for Pikmin," replied Johnny. "And also, if an Onion is close to another Onion when they fly up for the night, the Onions will merge together. That's why we're here in one Onion instead of being in three individual Yellow, Red, and Rock Onions," he continued.

"Oh..." said Joel. "...so where are we now? Where has this Onion landed?"

Johnny shrugged. "Not sure," he said. "Probably somewhere near where we took off. Let's see." He walked over to one of the holes in the Onion's walls and crawled into it, and Joel followed. They crawled down, and soon found themselves blinded by the sunlight for a moment. As their eyes adjusted, they took a look around at their surroundings.

It was a large, grassy expanse, broken up by some sparse trees standing tall from the ground. The sky was a deep blue, transitioning to orange near the horizon where the rising sun sneakily shone from. In the west, a cave's mouth could be seen, looking quite small from the distance. Closer to the landing spot were a few odd flowers, around ten, each of which stood on tall stems and almost reached the Onion's bulb. Each of the flowers had an odd, thick pellet in the middle, each of which was colored either red, gray, and a few were even colored yellow. The pellets all had some white number on them, with the smaller pellets having '1' on them and larger ones having '5' on them.

"Looks like my guess was right," Johnny said as he stepped onto the ground. "This seems pretty close to where the Red and Yellow Onions took off." Joel followed Johnny outside onto the ground.

"What are these... flower things?" Joel asked. "Oh, these are Pellet Posies. They're called that because of the pellets in their flowers, of course," Johnny explained. "If you take one of the pellets and put it under the Onion, it will suck up the pellet and create Pikmin in the color of the pellet, I think."

"Oh, that reminds me of something," Joel interrupted. "I found the Rock Onion after instinctively carrying some bug's dead body to it, but I didn't get the chance to actually put the bug in there. It still made a sprout, though."

"Hm," Johnny hummed in intrigue. "That's interesting. A similar thing happened with me and the Yellow Onion! When I found it, it automatically made a single Yellow sprout."

"Huh," said Joel, looking over to a gray Pellet Posy. He felt oddly drawn to it, as though it were calling out to him. He instinctively took a step toward it, and another, and another, and he walked right up to it. He grabbed the long, green stem that the pellet flower stood upon, and started to climb up it.

Joel fell over onto his back after barely getting off the ground. "Agh!" he grunted. He stood back up and looked towards the Pellet Posy's pellet.

"You need some help with that?" asked Johnny. Joel turned to him and sighed, "Sure."

Johnny walked up to the gray Pellet Posy and firmly grasped onto it, and he climbed up the stem to the flower, and headbutted the flower from behind. "Yah!" he shouted as he smacked the flower with his face. After a few firm hits, the pellet fell from the flower, ripping the stem slightly and taking Johnny down with it. "Ugh!" Johnny fell ungracefully to the ground on his back, limbs spread out like he was doing jumping jacks. He sat up, rubbing his head slightly. "Ow..." he groaned.

Joel chuckled slightly. "Are you OK?" he asked, almost worried. "Ah, yeah, I'm fine..." replied Johnny, who then stood up and started to pick up the pellet. "Let's carry this," he said as he tilted it up.

Joel attempted to nod, but just ended up doing some sort of bow. "Alright." He walked up to the pellet and lifted up the other half, and walked with Johnny under the Onion. The pellet began to glow a light blue and floated up out of Joel and Johnny's hands, and it flew straight into the Onion's bottom hole, like a reversed video of a bullet being shot from a gun.

The Onion's bulb squeezed up as it shot out two gray sprouts that gently floated down to the ground and sunk into it like quicksand.

"Woah," said Joel in wonder.

Joel started to walk over to a sprout and reached a hand to it.

"Wait!"

Joel turned to Johnny. "Huh? Why?" he asked. "That Pikmin only has a leaf on its stem right now," Johnny responded. "So?" asked Joel. "So, that means it needs to stay in the ground for a bit. If you pluck it right away, it'll be weak and only have a leaf, like most of the Pikmin here. If you give it some time before plucking it, it'll have a bud on its stem like Dave and me, and Dave said that if it stays in the ground for a long while, it'll grow a flower!" Johnny explained.

"Oh," said Joel. He glanced to the sprout for a moment. "What do we do while we wait?" he asked.

Johnny shrugged, and said "I dunno."

"Hey guys!"

Johnny and Joel looked up and saw Dave's head popping out from the Onion. "Ah," uttered Johnny, "Hi, Dave."

Dave climbed down the Onion's leg. "Whatcha doing?" he asked. "Oh, nothing much," Johnny replied, "we just made a couple of Rock Pikmin, but that's it."

Dave glanced over to the Pikmin sprouts. "I see," he said flatly.

It was silent for a few seconds.

"This is a bit boring," said Johnny. "Let's do something."

"It's not very boring to me," Joel interjected, "This all is pretty new and exciting, honestly."

"Well, Johnny and I are a bit bored, so let's go do something!" exclaimed Dave.

"Like what?" asked Johnny.

Dave blinked. He looked up in thought, rubbing a 'hand' against his 'chin'. "Hmm..." His gaze seemed to lock onto Johnny's stem, specifically the bud on top.

"Let's try to get flowers on our stems. There must be some nectar around here," said Dave. "Huh?" Johnny and Joel uttered.

"Right, I haven't told either of you about this. Some kinds of grass in the _Pikmin_ games let out sweet nectar when plucked, and if a Pikmin drinks the nectar, it will grow a flower," Dave explained.

"Oh, OK," said Johnny. "Sounds interesting," said Joel.

Dave turned away from the Onion and looked at the grass, whose tall veil of green was occasionally interrupted by a rainbow of Pellet Posies. He walked up to a razor-thin blade of grass and grabbed it firmly in his hands, then he ripped it out of the ground. Some clear, watery liquid dribbled out of the blade from where it was torn. "Aw, there's no nectar in this one," Dave said disappointedly. "Let's pluck another one," he continued.

Johnny walked next to Dave and looked around at the grass. A short, crowded cluster of grass close together caught his eye, and he walked to it. He gripped some strands of grass and pulled hard, and it tore effortlessly, with a thick, yellow liquid leaking from what little grass was still attached to the ground.

"Dave! I think I got it!" Johnny shouted excitedly. "Oh, really!?" Dave ran over to Johnny and looked at the yellow nectar. "Nice, you did!"

"Yeah! So, how do I drink it?" asked Johnny. "I don't know for sure, in the games it looked like the Pikmin just sorta leans in and absorbs the nectar," Dave replied.

Johnny gazed into the nectar. It was a round blob as tantalizingly yellow as gold, and it was so shiny that Johnny could clearly see his reflection in it. It was a bit weird seeing his reflection as a Yellow Pikmin, and for a second he felt he could sympathize with dogs who think their reflection is another, different dog. He reached out his right hand and dipped it into the nectar, and he felt it flow into his pores. The blob of nectar shrunk slightly, and a sweet, relaxing feeling rushed over Johnny's body and into his stem, and he felt his bud gently open up and become a flower, followed by a rush of energy. He shivered slightly, removing his hand from the nectar. "Woah... That felt _good._ "

"Ooh," Dave uttered. "Now I'll try." He leaned down and dipped his nose into the nectar, poking it like a fork poking jello. Johnny saw Dave shiver slightly as the nectar flowed into his face and the bud on his stem unfurled into a white, five-petaled flower. Dave slowly stood back up and stood silently, looking up at his own stem. "Wow," he said softly.

Joel walked over to the two boys. "Cool," he said, slightly awestruck. Joel reached out his hands and dipped them into the yellow nectar, letting it get absorbed into the planty pores. His stem stood straight up, extending vertically like a TV antenna, and the leaf quickly folded up and in a split second seemed to quickly melt into a flower.

Joel took his hands out of the nectar, seeming to cringe slightly as he squinted his eyes.

"That felt _so_ weird," he uttered.

"Really? I think it was alright," said Johnny.

"Nah, I think I can understand what Joel's talking about. That rocky body's pretty inflexible, so that would probably lead to some uncomfortability," replied Dave.

"Yeah, I think that's the problem. I feel like this weird new Pikmin body is just... stifling," said Joel.

"Huh," Johnny uttered. He then glanced over to the Onion, seeming to notice something. "Huh?"

Joel and Dave turned to also look at the Onion, and noticed a Yellow Pikmin coming out of the Onion, followed by another Pikmin, and another Pikmin, and another Pikmin.

There were four Pikmin, two red and two yellow, coming out from the Onion. "What're they doing?" asked Dave. "Maybe they're wondering what we're doing?" muttered Joel.

One of the Yellow Pikmin looked at Johnny, Dave, and Joel and waved its hand. "Hi!" it said.

"Hold up, that's Amito!" Johnny exclaimed. "Hi!" he said to the group, waving his hand.

"Hi!" Amito repeated, walking over to Johnny with the other three following.

Amito stopped in its tracks as it noticed the small blob of nectar on the ground, still shining a tantalizing yellow. Amito ran to the nectar and immediately fell face-first into it, splashing nectar everywhere around it. "Woah!" Johnny yelled, shielding his face from a wave of the yellow liquid.

What nectar still was under Amito quickly flowed into its pores, and Amito's leaf quickly became a flower as it stood up and twirled excitedly.

The other three Pikmin that were following Amito all made a disappointed sound in unison, sounding like an "Aww...!"

Amito turned to the group and shrugged slightly, making a somewhat apologetic hum.

"Wow, greedy Amito!" Johnny scolded half-seriously. Amito turned to Johnny and made the same sorry sound again, before it caught its own attention with its stem. "Hm?" it hummed in interest, looking at the bottom of its flower.

Johnny sighed slightly and pointed to the tip of Amito's stem. "You grew a flower," he said. " _Flower._ "

"Fower?" Amito repeated.

"Flower," Johnny corrected.

"Flower," Amito said curiously.

"Oh, now we know the word 'flower'! What an accomplishment!" Joel interrupted. Johnny turned to him. "Why so impatient? This actually went pretty fast, at least compared to other times I taught Amito words," he said irritatedly. "I'm just making conversation~," Joel replied sarcastically.

* * *

Word count: 3530

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey there! Sorry that this ending was so abrupt again. I couldn't really think of anything more to add, and I'm also a lazy piece of crap... Anyways, how about Christmas? I'm really excited for it, especially since it's finally December. I just feel like it's a bit inappropriate to get super excited for Christmas before it's even December, which is what my family's been doing. We even already have a Christmas tree up! It's artificial, so at least it will last to Christmas. Also, you might already know that this fanfic takes inspiration from other ones such as the perpetually unfinished _True Colours_ or the equally unfinished _Life as a Pikmin_ , and you may also notice that they're both long-abandoned, and that's partly why I'm making this, since I really like the idea of being flung into another world and trying to get back home and am disappointed that there aren't many good fanfics like that. Please review this, and thank you for reading!)


	5. Vegetable Reunion, Part II

Back in the real world, people were freaking out. Three children had disappeared mysteriously in two days, and nobody had much of an idea what was going on. The first two boys, named Jonathan "Johnny" Johnson and David "Dave" Davis II, are said to have disappeared after the latter dared the former to stay in a cave near the Johnson household overnight, and the third, Johnny's brother named Joel Johnson, is theorized to have disappeared after trying to find Johnny and Dave in said cave.

* * *

Outside of the cave, right at sunrise, five people had gathered.

There was a wide man with jet black hair and a hawk-like nose, a tall lady with dark brunette hair, a young girl who looked like a mix of the former two with the woman's hair and the man's nose, a tall man with dark brown hair, and an equally tall woman with long, blonde hair.

"Why are we here again...?" the young girl yawned sleepily. The lady turned to her and said, "Davina, we've already told you that we're here to find your brother, Dave!"

The tall man and the blonde woman glared at the lady.

"...And also the Johnson kids," she continued.

"Do we have to do it so _earlyyy_?" the girl, Davina, whined.

"Don't you want to have your brother back?" the lady asked.

"Yes, I do, but I don't want to wake up at six in the morning on a Sunday..."

"Could we stop wasting time talking and start using time searching?" the blonde woman interrupted grumpily, pulling out a flashlight from her pocket and shining it into the cave. The tall man glanced over to her, frowning slightly. "Alex, I know this is a stressful time for all of us, but there's no need to be so rude..." Alex scowled slightly. "Excuse you, Joey, but I just want to have living children," she said angrily.

"Woah! Uh..." Joey stammered.

"Hey, we don't need to be so angry or to argue... Let's just go, shall we?" the wide man interjected. "Sounds good to me, Dad..." Davina murmured tiredly.

Alex walked into the cave, followed closely by the others. They looked around in every nook and cranny of the cave, literally leaving no stone unturned. They searched for a few minutes, and eventually came across a somewhat small corridor that led into a long room that had four big, brightly colored flowers, each one having a different color. The flowers were blue, purple, white, and pink, with the first three being flatter and staying close to the ground, and the pink one being taller and cup-shaped.

"Woah," Joe uttered.

"What're these weird flowers?" the wide man, Davina Davis's dad, Mr. Davis, asked. "How could they grow to be so large without any sunlight?"

"Ooh!" said Davina, walking towards the pink, cup-shaped flower. "Wait a second, Davina!" said Mr. Davis, running towards her. "You can't just walk up to strange plants like that!"

Davina rolled her eyes and continued to walk to the flower. "It's OK, Dad," she said with a smile. She touched the flower's petals, going on her tippytoes to look inside of it, with Mr. Davis standing behind her worriedly.

Davina leaned slightly into the flower, seeming to be a bit enchanted by it. "This is really pretty," she said. "Uh... Yeah, I suppose...?" replied Mr. Davis. Davina then tipped over and fell slightly into the flower. "Oh!" she yelped. "Ah!" Mr. Davis yelled.

Davina turned around to face up and chuckled slightly. "Remember what I just said~?," she teased, "It's OK, Da-" The pink flower's petals folded up and trapped Davina inside. "WOAH!" Mr. Davis shouted, stumbling backwards into the white flower. He fell on his back onto the flower, and tried to get up, but the white flower's petals also folded up and trapped him inside.

The brunette lady, Davina's mom, gasped in horror. "Davina! David!" she screamed, running to the flowers. The flowers slowly opened up their petals after a minute, revealing... nothing. There was nothing in these flowers. The flowers' petals then quickly faded black and withered away, followed by the rest of the flower.

Mrs. Davis stared at the spots where there used to be the pink and white flowers, and she fainted. Right onto the purple flower. It then did the same as the other flowers, trapping her inside of the flower, then destroying her body, then wilting.

Joey and Alex stared blankly into the room, which now only had one blue flower in it.

"What the hell...?" Alex said confusedly.

"I have no idea..." said Joey.

"Should we... tell the police, or something?"

"Do you think any policeman's gonna believe us if we say what happened? 'Oh yeah, officer, they just got eaten by some rainbow flowers in this cave!'"

"You never know for sure! Maybe someone will believe it?"

Joey sighed. " _Maybe._ "

* * *

 _'...'_

 _'... ...huh...?'_

 _'It's dark... I can't feel anything...'_

 _'Where am I...?'_

 _'Wait, maybe I'm in... but that's impossible...'_

 _'But then again, those flowers looked just like...'_

 _'Candypop buds...'_

 _'And I guess it would be dark... underground...'_

 _'So, hah! Seems like my years of video gaming have finally paid off!'_

 _'Now how do I get out...? It's not like there's anyone to pluck me out of the ground...'_

 _'Guess I'll just have to get out on my own?'_

 _'I can move my head a little... c'mon, shuffle to freedom!'_

Davina was half-buried in dirt, her eyes barely peeking above the ground.

 _'I knew it!'_

She seemed to be in a large cave, with a rocky floor extending far out. Close to her, a couple of colorful sprouts popped out from the ground, one colored white and the other purple.

Davina looked directly up to the top of her head, and she could barely see a pink stem with a leaf on top.

She began to continue to attempt to get out from the ground, twisting and turning as much as possible. In just a few seconds, she managed to free her entire head, followed by her shoulders, and then her entire body soon after. She stood up, looking around the cave. She fell down soon after, unbalanced.

"Oof!" Davina grunted as she hit the ground. _'Ow! Looks like Winged Pikmin can't walk well... How do I fly?'_

She turned her head back, so back it hurt slightly, and peeked at her back. As expected, there were two transparent, bug-like wings on it, unmoving. She stared at them, almost expecting them to spontaneously flutter.

...Davina sighed, shaking her head. _'Of course. Why would I expect them to just randomly move? I'll have to put in some effort.'_

She focused on trying to move her back, trying to find what would get the wings to move. _'I remember reading something in school about how bees fly by sending rapid signals to a muscle... Maybe that'll work?'_ She then quickly tensed and relaxed her back, jerking it like there were a localized seizure in her spine. After a few minutes of doing this, she realized that that also wouldn't work. She sighed again.

 _'Argh... What do I_ do?! _'_ She looked up to the roof of the cave blankly, thinking of how she could get herself to fly. There were a few holes in that far-off ceiling, holes which bright sunlight came through, like coffee through a filter. Davina stood up slightly, still looking straight up. She almost felt herself lift off from the ground as she wondered, her mind wandering through possibilities.

Davina looked down and noticed she was already what seemed to her to be a foot off of the ground. _'Wait, WHAT?!'_ She tensed up instinctively, and she fell to the ground feet-first. _'How did I do that. What the heck, I was flying. I barely even noticed.'_ She looked back to her wings and stared at them, still tense.

The wings still just stuck out, unmoving, almost as if to mock Davina.

She looked forward after a while of frustrated staring. _'Maybe it's like how to swim you need to relax?'_ She closed her eyes and relaxed her body, mind still somewhat racing in excitement. She lied in place for a minute, and eventually, she felt her limbs separate from the ground. She opened her eyes.

Sure enough, she was flying, only an inch above the ground this time. _'Yes! I'm doing it!'_ She did a slight twirl, starting to happily float through the air. She had had a dream like this once where she was flying, but it was nothing like the real thing. Davina felt free.

Davina flew a lap or two around the room, zipping next to every inch of the rocky walls. She flew through the air, with her wings beating off of it every moment to keep her up, fluttering so fast they blurred into a gray arc. She continued to fly for a while, but she realized, _'Oh, yeah... I can't just do this forever! I'm a Pikmin now, and I'll have to find an Onion if I want to survive the night! And also, what about those white and purple sprouts?'  
_

She flew down to the ground and landed next to the two sprouts, careful not to fall. Both of them had leaves on their tips, and they swayed slightly like they were being lightly pushed by a gentle breeze. Davina reached out a hand to the white stem, which was a bit smaller than the purple. She firmly planted her feet on the ground, and she pulled the stem with all her might! But since she was a Winged Pikmin, she was weak and couldn't pull it out much.

Davina let go of the stem and huffed in discontent. She walked back a few steps and began to fly into the air again. She flew a few feet backwards, and then she zoomed through the air past the sprout, grabbing it on the way, and she uprooted it from the ground with incredible force. "Ahh!" came a sudden shout from the sprout as it was flung around the room.

Davina lowered herself down to the ground, still holding the plant's stem in her hands. She stood down, letting go of it. Standing in front of her was a small, white, plant-like humanoid creature with large, bright red eyes. _'A White Pikmin.'_ It stumbled slightly, seeming to be unbalanced, and it rested a three-fingered hand on its head. "Urgh..." it mumbled.

The White Pikmin closed its eyes for a few seconds and lowered its head slightly. Davina blinked. "Um... Hi?" she said hesitantly. The Pikmin opened its eyes and looked up to her. Its eyes widened slightly and it stared at her unblinkingly.

Davina slowly reached her right hand out to the Pikmin. It glanced down to it, and it slowly put its own hand on top. Davina shook its hand.

 _'Since I was a human and got turned into a Pikmin, this guy probably is, too...'_ Davina looked into the Pikmin's red eyes. "Uh... Who ah you?" she asked. "Uh-..." the Pikmin mumbled. "A...I'm... D-Debid (I...I'm... D-David)."

 _'David? Like... David Davis?! As in my dad!? That makes sense; he_ was _standing right in front of the White Candypop Bud...'_

"An'... you?" the Pikmin continued.

"I'm Davina," Davina replied.

The Pikmin, David (AKA Mr. Davis), seemed to flinch slightly in surprise. "Davina!?"

"Yeah, Dad!"

"Wh... How are you...?"

"I'm not sure, but it seems like we've somehow been turned into Pikmin."

Mr. Davis cocked his head slightly to his right. "Huh? Pikmin?"

"From the _Pikmin_ series of games. I already have _Pikmin 3_ for the Wii U and _Pikmin 2_ for the GameCube, remember?"

"Ah, yeah... I do remember buying those games."

"Yup, and now we're in that world."

"...So, getting eaten by a big flower can transport you into the world of a video game and make you into a creature from it?"

"Apparently!"

Mr. Davis blinked. "Well... What do we do?"

Davina shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe let's find Dave and the Johnsons? They've gotta be around here somewhere."

Mr. Davis looked over to the nearly forgotten purple stem. "What's that?" he asked. "Oh! That's probably a person-turned-Pikmin, too," said Davina, flying over to it. She grabbed it and gave a firm tug, which didn't do anything except pull the stem slightly. _'Purple Pikmin are heavy and Winged Pikmin are weak, so I can't lift it on my own... Maybe I can pluck this with Dad's help?'_

"Help me pluck this," she said. "OK..." Mr. Davis replied, walking over to her.

He laid a hand on the purple Pikmin sprout, and immediately he noticed a problem. "I... I don't have thumbs," he said concernedly.

"Neither do I, but I still managed to pluck you from the ground! Just try using both hands," said Davina.

"OK..." Mr. Davis gripped the sprout with both hands, and so did Davina. "Now, pull!" shouted Davina, pulling on it with all her might. Mr. Davis also pulled, planting his feet firmly on the ground and stretching the stem upwards. They pulled for a few seconds, and the sprout began to be uprooted.

* * *

"I wonder if there's anyone else in that cave..." said Johnny, perched on top of a Pellet Posy and looking off to the western horizon.

"Hm?" Dave turned to Johnny.

"I said I wonder if anyone else is in that cave. After all, there are still four flowers left, so maybe there are more people who've become Pikmin."

"Maybe," Dave said, "but that's pretty far away. It'll take a while if we want to go and check."

"C'mon, it only took around ten minutes to walk from the cave to that tree where I found the Yellow Onion," said Johnny. "Well, we're pretty far away from that, aren't we? At least, what, 10 feet? That's pretty far for a Pikmin! And we're even further from the cave!" said Dave.

"It'll only take like fifteen minutes if we run, and even if no one's there, it'll give us something to do while those Pikmin sprouts grow," Johnny said, pointing to the stems growing from the ground under the Onion.

"I guess so, _but_ -" "Why are you being such a devil's advocate? You weren't so negative when we were human," Johnny interrupted.

"Wasn't I? It just feels natural to me to act like this. Maybe becoming a Pikmin is affecting my personality..." said Dave.

"Yeah, maybe so," said Johnny.

"...or _maybe,_ you're being weird," Dave continued, pointing at Johnny.

"Huh!?"

"Seriously, I've noticed you've been seeming a bit off, too. You seem more happy-go-lucky and generally... childish?" said Dave.

"That's probably just 'cause you've become such a stick in the mud," Johnny said playfully.

"Hey! I just want to survive here. Remember that whole thing I said about how this world is dangerous?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, and it'll eat you and your loved ones, poop them out and then eat them again. I get it. But don't you think we should see if anyone else has been turned into a Pikmin?" said Johnny.

Dave sighed. "I guess so..."

* * *

 _'...'_

 _'...?'_

 _'...It's dark... I can't move...'  
_

 _'Where am I...?'_

 **RRIP!** "Ahh!"

 _'Huh!? What was that sound?!'  
_

 _'...Whatever it was, it was pretty short.'_

 _'...'_

 _'This is pretty boring...'_

 _'sigh... ...What the-!? Something's tugging on my head!'  
_

 _'Agh! That kinda hurts!'_

"Now, pull!"

 _'What!? Was that a voice?! "Now, pull"? You already- AGH! I'm being lifted by my head!'  
_

 _'Ow, ow, ow!'_

 _'Wait... I see light! I'm... underground?! Huh?'_

Antonia Davis, wife of David Davis I and mother of Davina Davis and Dave Davis, found herself being pulled out of the ground by... someone. She was being forcefully and slowly pulled by the top of her head, like a stubborn carrot being torn from the ground by a determined yet weak farmer.

Whoever was pulling her out was definitely not slowing down anytime soon. She felt the dirt under her move as she was pulled inch by inch out of it. "It's working!" came a high-pitched voice from behind.

Antonia tried to look as far as she could behind her to see who was pulling her out, but just succeeded in making her eyes hurt. She winced and closed them, then opened them again, looking up to the top of her head. She could see a purple stem with a pair of small pink hands wrapped around it. _'What in Hell?'_ she thought, still being slowly pulled out of the dirt.

* * *

Johnny and Dave were standing outside of the mouth of that cave they had woken up in as Pikmin.

"You so sure about this, Johnny?" Dave asked, "This cave seems pretty dangerous. Remember that Bulborb? There's probably a lot more than the one we saw."

Johnny shook his head slightly. "We managed to make it out OK, and so did Joel. We'll be able to do it."

They walked into the dark cave.

It was large as ever, with every sound faintly echoing off of the far-off walls. A slight shiver went up Johnny's 'spine', but he didn't say anything.

 ***dig dig***

Johnny's yellow ears twitched as he noticed a faint sound to his right. He glanced over, and he saw a couple of pink Female Sheargrubs burrowing out from the ground around what seemed to him to be a couple feet away. Johnny gasped slightly in wonder. "Ohmygod~!" he said excitedly. "Look, Dave!"

"What?" Dave said, looking over to the right.

"Sheargrubs!" Johnny shouted, throwing his arms in the air and running towards them.

Dave blinked, speechless. "...Really, Johnny? We're doing this whole 'you freaking out over cute Sheargrub' thing again?" Johnny stopped and glanced at Dave for a second. "I'm just trying to have some _fun_ here, in this brutal world where everything will eat me and my loved ones and poop them out and eat them again! Just like I said yesterday, who knows how long we'll be Pikmin? Might as well enjoy ourselves during," he said confidently.

Dave folded his arms. "I guess you're right..." he admitted.

* * *

Antonia stared at what she saw in front of her, the things that had apparently pulled her out. They were two odd creatures unlike anything she had seen before, and they both looked to be plant-like creatures. They both had humanoid bodies, faces that only had two large eyes on them, and long stems that ended in a green leaf coming from the top of their scalps. One was smaller and white with red eyes, while the other flew above the ground with wings, was colored a bright pink, and had bright blue eyes.

The pink creature flew down to face Antonia, causing her to flinch slightly. "Ummm..." it said in a high-pitched voice. "...Who are you?"

Antonia continued to stare, only blinking when her eyes began to burn from dryness. "...Aren't you gonna say anything?" the creature asked, flying upside down in front of Antonia.

"...I..." Antonia uttered. "I'm... Antonia."

"Oh!" the pink creature said, turning right-side up. "Antonia?"

"...Yes," said Antonia. "Antonia D-"

"Antonia Davis?" the creature interrupted.

Antonia paused. "...Yeah," she said with a slight squint.

"As in my mom, Antonia Davis?" the creature asked.

Antonia faltered speechlessly. "...What?" she stammered.

"I'm Davina!" the pink creature said proudly.

Antonia flinched backwards, feeling like her soul had been hit dead-on by a steamroller. She raised a hand to her chest, then noticed something else. Her body was completely purple and her hand had only three pointy fingers on it. She raised her hand in front of her face for a second and looked at it.

Antonia fainted.

* * *

Johnny and Dave were walking through the cave, and had been doing so for a few minutes. Dave had managed to pull Johnny away from the Sheargrubs pretty quickly, because "It was your idea to go here in the first place, Johnny!"

They were nearing the room where they had woken up as Pikmin, and it would have been fairly easy to keep on going if it weren't for one thing being there: a sleeping Bulborb.

"Well, looks like we'll have to get past this guy again," Dave whispered flatly. "It probably won't be hard as long as we stay quiet."

"Sounds simple enough," Johnny replied.

"Yeah, just don't be noisy, and don't touch it," Dave said, beginning to walk past the Bulborb.

"OK," Johnny replied, following closely on the tips of his 'toes'.

They walked around the Bulborb uneventfully and rounded the corner leading into the room, then peeked into the room. There were three leafed Pikmin there, each of a different color and size. The smallest was white and had no features other than two large red eyes, the medium-sized one was pink and had wings which it used to fly above the ground, and the biggest was purple and had some small hair-like extensions coming from its head.

The three Pikmin seemed to be in the middle of a conversation.

"I... I just... How?!" the Purple Pikmin shouted.

"I don't know," the Winged Pikmin responded. "I just know that _this-_ " It gestured around the room and to itself. "-is happening now. We just gotta deal with it!"

The Purple Pikmin blinked and rested its head in its hands. "I..." it muttered.

Johnny turned to Dave. "See, I was right!" he whispered. Dave glared at Johnny for a moment, then looked back to the Pikmin.

"There's no way I can deal with this!" the Purple Pikmin cried out. The White Pikmin walked up to it and laid a hand on its back. "Honey..." it said softly.

Johnny walked into the room and stood a few feet behind the Pikmin. "...Hey," he said loudly. The three Pikmin stopped and looked over to him.

"Who are you?" Johnny asked.

Silence filled the room for a few seconds.

"Um," the Winged Pikmin uttered, "I'm wondering the same thing. Who are _you?_ "

"Oh, I'm just 'Johnny Johnson'. You might have heard of me?" Johnny replied confidently, resting a hand on his chest.

The three Pikmin gasped. "YOU'RE JOHNNY?!" they shouted in unison.

"The one and only."

"Oh, and I'm here too, y'know!" Dave interrupted, running next to Johnny. "I'm Dave Davis!"

The three Pikmin gasped intenselier than before, the Winged Pikmin especially. It quickly flew right in front of Dave's face. "BIG BRO!?" it shouted. "...Davina?" he responded.

Davina nodded. "Yup."

Johnny looked at the White and Purple Pikmin. "And _they_ are...?"

"Oh, uh, I'm Davina and Dave's father," said the White Pikmin. "And I'm Antonia, their mother," said the Purple Pikmin.

"Wow, this is pretty much a Davis family reunion, isn't it?" Johnny remarked.

"I suppose so," Mr. Davis replied.

"Speaking of family, where's Jon's brother, Joel?" Antonia asked.

"Oh, he's probably still at the Onion," Dave answered.

Mr. Davis and Antonia cocked their heads to the side. "The what?" they asked.

"Ooh! I know!" Davina said excitedly. "It's basically like a nest for Pikmin! Onions are in all the Pikmin games. In _Pikmin_ 1 and _Pikmin 2_ there are three Onions that hold the three primary colors of Pikmin, red, yellow, and blue, and they had a very oniony design, and the legs were like brown sticks that folded and unfolded, and in Pikmin 3, there is one Onion that holds all the colors of Pikmin except for White and Purple and it had a more water balloon-esque design with the legs being like yellow tentacles that stood on their tips and in _Hey! Pikmin_ they held White and Purple Pikmin so that means in between _Pikmin 2_ and _Hey! Pikmin_ -"

"Davina, you're doing the thing again," Dave interrupted.

Johnny looked to Dave concernedly. Dave glanced at Johnny for a moment, apparently reading his expression. "Davina sometimes gets a bit overeager with stuff like that. I almost think she has a long speech dedicated to any gaming-related subject possible..." he whispered.

Johnny looked to Mr. Davis and Antonia. "OK, now that we know what's going on-"

"We don't, really," Antonia interrupted.

 _'It seems you don't know that interrupting someone is rude.'_ "Do you know the gist of what's going on?"

"More or less, I suppose," said Mr. Davis.

"Then now that you know the gist of what's going on, let's get out of here. We'll need to find an Onion for you guys if you want to survive the night."

Mr. Davis put a hand to his 'chin'. "Hm? Why-" Antonia nudged him slightly, glanced at him, then to Davina, then to him, then raised her 'eyebrows'. "...Alright then," he said.

"Well, let's go already!" Dave exclaimed, turning around to the exit corridor.

They walked out of the room and through the corridor, but had to stop because something was still in the way... that Bulborb.

"Huh? What's that?" Antonia asked loudly, inciting a harsh "Shhh!" from Johnny and Dave. "You might wake it up!" Johnny whispered.

Davina made a smug **pfft** sound. "Wake it up? So? It's just a Bulborb!"

" _Just_ a Bulborb!?" Dave whispered.

"Um, _yeah._ C'mon, Dave, you've _played_ Pikmin 2 on my GameCube before!" Davina retorted.

"Back when it was _my_ GameCube..." Dave quietly muttered, before saying "Yeah, I have, and I know that there's no way seven Pikmin can hold their own against a Bulborb!"

"Yeah," Johnny said, "There's no way we can do anything but run from it."

"We can if we try~!" said Davina, flying next to Johnny.

"Huh? What are you-" Davina grabbed Johnny by the stem and flew up above the Bulborb. "Ah! Hey!" Johnny shouted, squirming uselessly in the air.

"It's OK!" Davina said, flying down next to the Bulborb's eyes. "Eyes are a Bulborb's weak spot. We just gotta hit them!" She dropped Johnny on its right eye.

The Bulborb instantly snapped awake and stood up, shaking its head furiously. Johnny held firmly onto the eye, digging his hands into the stalk and eyelid while the rest of his body was flung around like a rag doll. He raised his head and **smashed** it into the eye, and the Bulborb made a pained roar. It leaned forward for a second, then jerked back, nearly forcing Johnny off, but he managed to hold on. Johnny resumed repeatedly headbutting the eye, slamming over and over.

The Bulborb began to run off, going deep into the cave. "Ahh!" Johnny shouted, desperately clinging onto the middle of the stalk like an incompetent cowboy trying to ride a horse. He closed his own eyes and instinctively flexed his Pikmin stem, then began to jerk his head back and forth, trying to slam his flower into the eye. He felt a hit connect, and the Bulborb cried out in pain and fell to the ground, lying on its left side.

Johnny clung to the eye for a few seconds, breathing heavily. He slowly climbed down the eyestalk and onto the Bulborb's body. He sighed.

 **Patter patter patter** came a sound from behind Johnny, a sound that sounded like a crowd of five moving towards him. Johnny turned around and saw the others, panting like they had just ran a marathon.

"Oh! Johnny!" said Dave, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, "That Bulborb ran off so fast! Are you OK?"

Johnny pointed down towards the Bulborb he was standing on. "How do you think I am?" he asked sarcastically.

Dave blinked. "Well," he uttered, "well."

"Yeah, I'm doing well," said Johnny.

"See?!" Davina interrupted with a shout. "I _told_ you we could defeat it!"

"Huh? Johnny's the only one who did anything," Dave replied, "and you nearly gave us all a heart attack dropping him on its eye!"

"Pshaw~! Pikmin don't even have hearts," said Davina. Dave 'frowned'. "It's a metaphor, ya dummy," he said.

"At least use ones that make sense!" said Davina.

"Hey," Mr. Davis interjected, "aren't we supposed to be leaving this cave for some Onion thing? Maybe let's do that?"

"Fine..." Davina said somewhat disappointedly.

* * *

Word count: 4812

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey... Sorry for uploading over two weeks late. I don't really have an excuse. I'm lazy and sorry. Especially since I feel like this chapter was... under average. I feel like everyone was acting a bit OOC and reacting way too well to the situation at hand... I'd fix it but I don't want to delay this chapter any longer. I'm probably just gonna have to go on hiatus, partially because I won't be able to make any new chapters because of being distracted by Christmas, and also because I barely have any idea of what to do after this chapter. I have an idea for a Blue Pikmin character, but other than that... I guess I have a good idea for an ending? Like, not even a climax, just an ending and epilogue. As always, please review this, and thank you for reading and being patient.)


	6. Vegetable Surprise

Johnny and the Davises were walking through the cave in awkward silence. It was going to take at least twenty minutes to make it to the Onion from where they were, which Johnny knew, and he wasn't really interested in that much awkward silence.

He glanced up at Davina, who was flying above the rest of them. The leaf on her head swayed slightly as she fidgeted in the air, presumably from both excitement and the need to stay aloft. _'I don't really know much about aerodynamics,'_ Johnny thought, _'_ _but I don't feel like that leaf's really helpful with flying.'_

Johnny looked back forwards, continuing to walk through the dull rocky walls of the cave with the others. Bored, his mind began to wander about vaguely Pikmin-related concepts, prompted by Davina's leaf.

After about a minute of aimless thought, he made an interesting realization. If Davina and Dave's parents got turned into Pikmin, then they must have gotten stuck in those Candypop Buds. Then Johnny wondered what they were doing there in the first place?

"So..." said Johnny. "How come you guys got turned into Pikmin too?"

"Huh?" said Mr. Davis. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, like, why were you... in the cave with those Candypop Buds?"

"Oh, that's what they're called?" Antonia said inquisitively. Mr. Davis cringed.

"Yeah," Johnny affirmed. "And-"

"OH!" Davina shouted, startling everyone else. "Candypop Buds are these special flowers that appear in all the _Pikmin_ games except for _Hey! Pikmin_ , and they can turn Pikmin put into them into another color, Crimson Candypop Buds turn them into Red Pikmin, Golden Candypop Buds turn them into Yellow Pikmin, Lapis Lazuli Candypop Buds turn them into Blue Pikmin, eck cetera. What's interesting about Candypop Buds is their vague relationship with Pikmin and Onions, as they seem to have some sort of symbiotic association with Pikmin, which is a big part of my theory on the lifecycle of Pikmin where they start off as a normal Pikmin sprout, then maybe they turn into Ca-"

"Ahem," Dave faked clearing his nonexistent throat. "Davina."

"Oh, I'm getting carried away again, right? Sorry~!"

"...Anyway," Johnny continued, "as I was asking earlier, what were you guys doing in what I assume was the cave with the Candypop buds?"

"Ah, well," Mr. Davis began, "everyone in... the real world, I guess, is looking for you and Dave. The police already did an investigation in that cave, but after Joel disappeared, we, along with Joey and Alex, decided to take matters into our own hands. We found those 'Candypop Buds', and ended up like this."

"Woah..." Johnny uttered.

"W-Well, sorry about that..." said Dave.

"It's OK, Davie!" Davina interjected. "I'm really liking being a Pikmin so far. This is so inspiring! I'm already making a Pikmin fanfiction, but maybe this will provide some new ideas about what a sentient Pikmin civilization would be like."

"Oh, well," Dave stammered, "no problem, then...?"

They walked a bit further in slightly less awkward silence for a couple minutes before finally coming across the mouth of the cave.

"Finally..." Johnny sighed in relief as he saw the giant exit.

The group began to walk a bit faster as they saw it, eager to not be in this dull cave.

"Hold up," said Mr. Davis. "What is that?"

The group stopped.

"What's what?" asked Johnny.

"That," Mr. Davis said, pointing to a normal patch of soil. "It looks like something's moving there!"

Johnny looked at Mr. Davis weirdly. "What are you talking about?"

"I see something wriggling there. It kinda looks like... a bunch of bugs?"

Johnny looked carefully at the dirt. "I don't see anything."

"Oh! I know why!" Davina suddenly interrupted. "It's because you're a Yellow Pikmin, Johnny, but my dad's a White Pikmin and those were introduced in Pikmin 2 and can see things that are underground with their unique eyes and I've always wondered how they could do that and I think maybe they have infrared vision or something like that and that theory's a big part of my fanfiction 'Pikmin Zero: the Rainbow of Fate ~Unmei no Niji~-"

"Davina, please don't," said Antonia.

"Ah, right! Sorry~!"

Dave subtly sighed. "Well, like Davina was saying before starting that tangent, White Pikmin can see things hidden in the ground that other Pikmin can't, since they're, well, hidden in the ground," he explained.

"Oh, uh, OK," said Mr. Davis, "but I'm seeing something moving under the ground and I think part of it just popped out from the ground?"

"Huh!?" Johnny and Dave turned and saw about a dozen purple Male Sheargrubs burrowing out from under the ground.

"Oh, SH-..." Dave started to yell, then stopped, glancing slightly at Mr. Davis and Antonia. "...CRAP!"

"Sheargrubs!" Johnny shouted.

Davina began to laugh suddenly. "Are you kidding me?!" she cried, cackling loudly between words. "Are you guys seriously getting worried about Sheargrubs?!"

Dave glared at Davina almost angrily. "Well, excuse me for thinking that five Pikmin who barely have any combat experience might find some Male Sheargrubs a challenge," he snarked.

"I just think you don't have good judgment of what is and isn't a threat, is all," Davina replied smugly.

Johnny looked between Dave, Davina, and the dozen Sheargrubs concernedly, both feeling like an argument might break out but also thinking that it probably was just a siblingly quarrel, right?

But then again, Dave definitely had been getting more aggressive after this whole getting turned into Pikmin thing...

"And _what_ makes you think that?" Dave asked angrily.

"Um, are you serious~?" Davina shrugged as she talked, somehow managing to make a mouthless smirk. "You thought we couldn't beat a Bulborb. A _Bulborb_ , for garnish's sake!"

"Hey, uh," Johnny interjected, "I'm pretty sure now isn't the time to argue, especially when your parents and an unrelated friend and LIKE A DOZEN SHEARGRUBS are present!"

Dave and Davina looked slightly surprised at Johnny, then glared uncomfortably at each other. "Ugh, fine..." they muttered.

"Alright," said Johnny, "Now how are we gonna deal with these?"

Davina perked up immediately. "Well," she spoke, reaching a hand to Dave's stem. "the best way to deal with most enemies is to throw Pikmin onto them!"

Dave ducked away from Davina. "No way!" he refused.

"Really, Dave? You know that Red Pikmin are the strongest type! You've played _Pikmin 2_ before!" Davina retorted.

"Yeah, well, I just don't feel comfortable with your hands on my stem after you just risked Johnny's life like ten minutes ago," Dave explained.

"Come on! I'm not gonna hurt you or anything!"

Dave squinted at Davina for a couple seconds. "...Fine," he sighed.

"Alright~!" Davina responded, carefully lifting Dave by his stem.

"Okay, let's see..." she muttered, carefully hovering over the scattering Sheargrub swarm.

She inspected from above for a few uncomfortable seconds.

"...Now!" she yelled, tossing Dave onto the small crowd.

Dave immediately crushed two Sheargrubs that he fell on top of, and he quickly stood up. He had drawn the Sheargrubs' attention; they all turned to look right at him. Dave felt a wave of fear rush over him, but then...

"And, again!" Davina said confidently, diving in to grab and throw Dave once more. She again threw him right onto some Sheargrubs, killing them instantly.

Dave stood up, looking somewhat surprised. "I've gotta say," he said as Davina picked him up again, "nice work!"

"Thank you~!" Davina said playfully, throwing Dave.

The third time, Dave landed more gracefully, backflipping onto a single Sheargrub. Now there were about half as many as before.

Johnny looked at the battle, impressed. _'I kinda wish I had popcorn,_ _'_ he thought. He glanced over at Mr. Davis and Antonia, who were speechlessly gawking in wonder at it.

Davina performed this almost cinematic act of smoothly picking Dave from the ground and perfectly throwing him onto Sheargrubs twice more, managing to throw him onto three Sheargrubs at once.

They had managed to kill all the Sheargrubs but one in what couldn't have been more than two minutes.

"Wow," said Dave, surrounded by Sheargrub corpses. "You really know how to throw a Pikmin."

"Of course I do, I've been playing Pikmin for as long as I remember!" Davina said proudly, twirling in the air.

Johnny stepped forward slightly, recognizing they weren't done yet. "Wait, guys, there's still one lef-"

The final Sheargrub came from behind and **CHOMP** ed Dave's left leg.

"A-Agh!" Dave let out a high-pitched cry. He flinched, ripping the upper part of his leg out of the Sheargrub's mouth, but the rest, which was just below the knee, tore off and the Sheargrub quickly swallowed it up. Dave limped onto his right leg as a pale pinkish red fluid oozed out of his left stump.

"Oh, shit!" Johnny shouted, cringing. Davina winced. Mr. Davis gasped. Antonia fainted.

"FUCK!" Dave screamed, hopping away from the still-approaching Sheargrub.

Johnny instantly started to dash towards the Sheargrub, roaring "DAAAVE!"

He forcefully tackled the Sheargrub into the ground, making a primal growl. He coiled up his stem and bashed and bashed the flower on top into the Sheargrub's flesh. The Sheargrub shrieked, trying to shake Johnny off.

Johnny raised his hand and drove a pointy finger into the Sheargrub's head, and it quickly stopped struggling.

Johnny stepped off of the limp insectoid corpse and looked over to Dave.

Dave blinked.

"...Woah," he said. "Th-Thanks."

"You're welcome," said Johnny.

They stood there in silence for a few seconds.

"So, uh..." Dave began, pausing for what seemed like ages.

"Brutal, isn't it...?"

Johnny looked at the Sheargrub body. It was, by any reasonable min's definition, brutally slaughtered. Johnny had flattened it unnaturally at the bottom, and its eyes were bulging out slightly. The part of the body that would correspond to the cranium was dented from both Johnny bashing it with his flower and also from him finger-stabbing it, and the wound in it leaked green blood.

Johnny looked to his right hand, the one he used to kill the Sheargrub, and it was covered in green blood slowly absorbing into his pores.

Slightly nauseous, Johnny replied "Yeah, I guess so..."

"...Excuse me, but what the Hell just happened?" Mr. Davis spoke up suddenly.

Johnny, Dave, and Davina turned to face Mr. Davis, having almost forgotten he was there after the distraction of... recent circumstances.

"Is there anything to explain, really?" Johnny asked, trying to seem calm. "We just killed a group of bugs and one of them crippled Dave. Is that so hard to understand?"

Mr. Davis looked speechlessly at Johnny. "Uh... I guess not...?"

"Speaking of me being crippled," Dave interjected, noticeably wincing in pain. "I think we should probably rush to the Onion." He gestured to his half-eaten leg.

"Ah, yeah..." Davina said uncomfortably. "I'll carry you there," she offered, reaching to Dave's stem.

"Wait," Mr. Davis interrupted.

"Huh? What is it? This is pretty urgent," Davina asked. managing to talk both worriedly and sarcastically.

Mr. Davis gestured to his left. "Antonia fainted earlier when Dave's leg got bit."

"Um, I don't care!" Davina responded harshly, pulling up Dave. "Dave needs help right now, and I don't care whether Antonia's there to see him."

"Maybe Mr. Davis can just wait here while we get Dave to the Onion?" Johnny suggested.

"Sounds alright to me..." said Dave, already a bit disoriented.

"That seems fine," said Mr. Davis.

"OK, let's go!" said Davina, flying out of the cave with Dave in her grip and Johnny following closely.

After about ten seconds of travel, Davina stopped. "Hold up... I just realized I don't know where the Onion is," she said a bit shakily.

Johnny also stopped, eyes slightly widened. "Ah... riight..." he murmured. "Then I'll lead the way," he said with a mask of confidence.

Johnny stepped in front of Davina and strolled quickly and confidently through the 'tall' grass. He took an occasional glance backwards now and then to make sure Davina and Dave were still behind him, which they always were, and racewalked for about thirteen minutes. His mind wandered, mostly contemplating if Dave would be OK, but also wondering what was going on in the real world, especially after what Mr. Davis said earlier.

* * *

"There's no chance in Hell that anyone will believe this."

"Come on, Joey! I know this is quite the bizarre scenario, but _somebody_ would know we're telling the truth, right?"

"Pfft, maybe that hobo sitting underneath the highway. But a police officer?! No way, Alex!"

Joey and Alex were arguing fervently in their too empty house, trying to decide what the hell they should do given recent... circumstances. They were both acting a bit irrationally since they had just, in person, seen their neighbors apparently get killed by flowers, but they were just coherent enough to passionately debate about going to the police about what they saw.

They had already been interviewed before when Johnny and Dave initially disappeared, and Joey didn't want to go through anything like that again, but Alex was insistent.

"Joey!" she yelled, taking out a camcorder from her back pocket. "They've gotta believe us! I've got video evidence!"

Joey stared at Alex in bewilderment, mouth agape. "Wh..."

"Since when did you have a camera?!" he shouted.*

"Didn't you notice?" Alex asked playfully. "I recorded everything that just happened in the cave!"

"Wouldn't I have noticed a camera..." Joey muttered. "Agh, well, whatever... Let's go and see if they believe it."

"Yay~!" Alex squealed.

* * *

Joel was sitting in the Onion. He didn't really have much to do other than that. From the outside, it might appear that he was just boredly leaning on the wall, but he was still very befuddled by what was going on and trying to wrap his head around it.

He looked around the round room. All of the twelve Pikmin were awake; he knew there were twelve because he had idly counted them about three times by now. They were equally divided into six Reds and six Yellows, and they were all just good enough at English to tell them their names, which weirded Joel out just a little bit because that implied he and the others were going to be here long enough to need to look to these weird plants for companionship.

 _'Ah well...'_ Joel thought. _'At least it gives my mind something to do.'_

Interestingly enough, he could tell all the Pikmin apart from vision alone, just like how he could tell one human face from another. _'That Yellow with upturned ears and a flower is Amito, the Red next to him with the bent nose is Rosso, those two Yellows are Tomi and Zapp and the longer-nosed Red who's talking with them is Fuoco, that pair of Reds are Scotto and Roast, those three excited Yellows talking together are Fulminè, Tuonetto, and Folgorè, and those other two Reds just awkwardly hanging around are Piccolo and Kiyeto.'_ Joel had mentally repeated that paragraph at least twice already, which worried him slightly, but he also didn't really care.

Maybe he cared enough to think he should get up and do something, though.

Joel stood up awkwardly, almost falling over and silently cursing this stiff new rocky body, and dawdled to the nearest hole to exit the Onion.

He slid down the gold Onion leg onto the ground, taking a look at the Rock sprouts. They were still in the leaf stage, and they were swaying slightly on their own. Joel would think the swaying was from the wind if it weren't for the fact that the wind was going perpendicular to the direction the sprouts were swaying.

Joel stood aimlessly next to the sprouts for a minute before noticing a sound. He couldn't hear it very well ( _'_ _Damn this body sucks'_ ), but it sounded like the buzzing of a flying fly accompanied by hurried footsteps.

He walked in the direction he thought the sound was coming from, trying to look through the tall, thick grass. He quickly saw a Pikmin's leaf attached to a pink stem what looked like five feet away, though Joel knew it was only one foot at most.

"We're almost there!" a high-pitched, kiddy voice said.

"Good..." Johnny's voice replied tiredly.

A familiar Yellow face parted the grass, startledly stepping back when he saw Joel.

"J-Joel!" said Johnny. "Ya scared me!"

"Hey, Jon," said Joel. "What're you doing?"

Joel's question was answered without words. A pink-colored Pikmin, which Joel presumed was a 'Winged Pikmin' because of its wings, was following behind Johnny and carrying another familiar Pikmin face. That of Dave. Half-lidded. Specifically without a left leg attached, a bleeding stump in its place.

Joel stared speechlessly.

Johnny looked uncomfortable.

"...Two questions," Joel sliced the veil of silence.

He pointed to Dave's lack of left leg. "What the Hell happened to Dave,"

He pointed to the Winged Pikmin. "and who the Hell is that."

Johnny cringed, darting his eyes away from Joel. "We... kinda had a run in with some Sheargrubs. And this is Dave's sister, Davina."

"Oh, hi..." Davina greeted awkwardly.

 _'Wow, unoriginal naming,'_ Joel thought silently. He normally would say stuff like that out loud, but it doesn't take a genius to know why he didn't.

Joel would have thought that Dave was dead if he wasn't looking right at him. With glazed, half-lidded eyes, but looking at him nonetheless. Dave was very pale, almost looking as pink as Davina, and dried bloody liquid clung to his left leg stump, with a little unsolidified liquid dripping from it every so often.

"We gotta get him to the Onion," said Davina, already fluttering to it.

Johnny and Joel walked close behind Davina, both worried for Dave, even if Joel didn't want to show it.

Davina held Dave next to one of the Onion's legs and a look of realization struck her face. "...This Onion isn't even part pink. This might sound cold, but I don't know what happens when a Pikmin tries to enter an Onion that isn't theirs, and even though it would be really inspiring for my fic, just in case it hurts me too I'm not gonna do it..." she said.

"Um, maybe just lower him onto the leg and I'll drag him in?" Johnny said uncertainly.

"I guess..." Davina responded, slowly descending to place Dave on the leg. He seemed to still be aware of what was going on, as he reached for the leg on his own. Davina carefully let go of Dave, making sure he was gripping the leg, and faced Johnny. "OK," she said cautiously.

Johnny then gripped the leg that Dave was on and slowly climbed up it. He scaled to Dave and stopped for a second, still cringing at the sight of his stump leg. He crawled awkwardly around Dave, trying not to hurt him more than he already was, and managed to get himself half into the Onion. He turned around and gently grabbed Dave's stem.

Johnny pulled Dave into the Onion.

* * *

Alex and Joey had reported their new evidence to the police. Just a couple hours afterwards, the unnamed cave responsible for six disappearances was being investigated again.

At the mouth of the cave, a middle-aged man who reeked of authority stood. The man, Chief Douglas Irving, was going to see this for himself. He didn't like the sudden panic caused by the disappearances. Not in his small town.

Accompanied by a small army of lesser-ranked police officers and investigators, he went into the cave.

The footage from Alex Johnson wasn't the clearest, but it was pretty obvious what it showed. There were various neon-colored flowers in the cave (which the previous investigation had found) that had... eaten the three latest victims of the mysterious disappearances, and presumably the previous as well.

Irving was quite skeptical, but he was damn sure that one way or another, the truth was gonna get revealed on that day.

After a few minutes of careful searching, literally leaving no stone unturned, they finally came across the part of the cave that the flowers apparently had been. Just like what was shown at the end of the video, only the blue one was left.

Irving began to approach the flower carefully, but tripped on a discarded flashlight and fell directly onto it.

"Agh!" he uttered as he dropped onto the odd flower. He could hear just about all of the other investigators behind him gasp in terror, but the chief didn't get trapped by the flower, just as he had expected not to.

"...I fuckin' knew it," he said roughly. He stood up off of the flower, looking down at it smugly. "That video was just a stupid fake." He stepped on top of the blue flower, shrugging. "Look at this!" He squatted down on the flower, grinding his shoes into its pigmented leaves. "I ain't-"

He was cut short by the flower almost instantly folding itself over him, trapping him, the last victim, inside.

"What the fuck!?" he shouted, voice muffled by the layer of leaves engulfing him. He pushed on the chlorophyllic mass to no avail, and it only folded to be smaller around him. The earthy smell of plants overwhelmed him in combination with a numbing sensation taking hold through his body, and he closed his eyes.

Irving collapsed, unconscious.

* * *

 _'... ...ng...'_

 _'...it's dark...'_

 _'...What's happening?'_

 _'The last thing I remember is... that flower...'_

 _'Damn, that video wasn't a fake after all!'_

 _'Where am I?'_

 _'Am I... dead? Is this heaven?'_

 _'If it is, I didn't expect it to be so dark and claustrophobic...'_

 _'...Is this just what the afterlife is gonna be?! Just a dark void for all eternity?!'_

 _'N_ -No! _'_ Irving futilely tried to shake his head. _'This can't- ...Wait, did I just feel something brush across my face?'_

 _'...'_ He tried moving his head again. _'Yeah, I did! I just felt my face touching... whatever this is!'_

 _'Come on!'_ he thought, slowly shaking his head left to right. _'I'm gonna get out of whatever's holdin' me in here!'_

After about a minute of struggling, he managed to detach his head from the stuff he was in. He moved around a bit more, slowly loosening the material's grip around his shoulders and arms, and he tried to push himself up.

He felt his face meet cool air as he breached the top of the material, light flooding into his eyes.

Gasping, he dipped his head down to look at the material he was stuck in.

 _'Dirt.'_

 _'...Wait, dirt!?'_

He blinked slowly, befuddled at the situation. He was just trapped and apparently killed by a flower, and then he found himself buried in dirt.

Irving slowly raised his arms out of the thick soil, and he noticed something odder.

Staring at his right arm, he noticed, _'Is my arm... blue?!'_

He raised his arm up and stared at it in complete wonder and confusion. It was very blue, reminding him of an early 2000s song with lyrics so bad he nearly cried the first time he heard it, and it was also short and stick-like, with a slight bend in the middle in a way similar to a human elbow, ending in a small trapezoidal palm with three webbed, equilateral fingers.

He felt faint for a moment, but refocused on getting himself out of the ground. He put his two blue stick hands to the ground and pushed, dragging himself out of the ground.

Irving stood up slowly, legs trembling slightly.

He looked around. He was in some sort of large cave, with a couple largish holes eroded in the top that allowed sunlight to shine through. In one wall of the rocky chamber was some sort of corridor.

He took a hesitant step forward with a foot that looked just like his stick hands, heading toward the corridor. He didn't have a clue what was going on, but he wanted to find out.

As he walked to the corridor, he noticed something moving from his peripheral vision. He raised his head up to see it, but it retracted from view. He did this a couple times before getting irritated and trying to grab the top of his head to find out if the thing he was seeing was on it, only to be met with the feeling of a plant stem in his hands.

Surprised, Irving slightly bent the stem down to look at it. It was long and blue with a green leaf on the end, looking like a generic plant that had an incomplete paint job.

Irving stared at the stem for a few moments in infantile curiosity and confusion. He would have never expected any situation like this to happen in a million years, but yet, it had.

After some time of bafflement, he finally refocused on looking around the cave, starting with that big corridor.

The corridor led to more giant cave, and he walked aimlessly through empty stone walls. He walked aimlessly for a few minutes, stumbling through the dim cave system.

Irving eventually stumbled across a big red... thing. It had big circular white spots around it, almost reminding him of a mushroom, and was easily over four times his size.

He walked around the thing wonderingly and quickly noticed it was attached to pale flesh. This piqued his interest even more, and he stepped around to the front of it.

As soon as he saw the thing's face, he startledly fell backwards. It was vaguely doggish, with its face narrowing into a snout with two nostrils and a large, wide maw. It had two half-lidded, hazy eyes on stalks, the right eye looking dark blue and bruised while the other looked like a normal eye, assuming 'normal eye' means 'giant eye on a stalk'.

Irving quickly realized that this thing was probably dead, prompting both relief and new terror.

 _'_ _What could kill such a giant beast? What is with that black eye? How did it die?'_

He quickly stepped off in another direction, frowning uncomfortably.

After a few more minutes of mostly aimless walking, occasionally spotting some odd creatures in the dark distance and going in the opposite direction of them, he found the mouth of the cave.

A large arch of stone framed a bright view outside into tall, thick grass, with a couple trees visible in the distance.

Irving sighed slightly, eager to see something other than dim, rocky walls.

Cautiously, Irving exited the cave.

* * *

WORD COUNT: 4402 (kind of)

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey! Sorry for keeping you waiting. I'm really pushing my T rating in this chapter, aren't I? I'm kind of worried that I'll need to change it to M, but then again, _Spored_ (arguably the best Pikmin fanfic ever) got away with a lot of stuff, so... Only time will tell if I have to change it. Anyway, how do you like that double cliffhanger? What's gonna happen to Irving? What's gonna happen to Dave? All these questions and more will get answered in the next installment of... DRAGON BALL Z! Wait, this is a Pikmin fanfiction... I mean, find out in the next chapter! Also, I was reading through my older chapters, and holy crap are they bad. I mean completely changing location without starting a new paragraph bad, which happened in _Flying Vegetables_ (and these chapter names are almost just as bad). And don't get me started on how I formatted dialogue...  
By the way, did you know that the document editor here counts two words connected by a hyphen like 'cross-pollination' as two separate words? That's a bit of a problem for me because I include s-stuttering in my dialogue, which I don't think is a word but the editor does...  
Anyway, please review this, and thank you for reading.)

*Wondering what this is about? Well, I'm dumb and didn't realize until after writing chapter 5 that this story takes place in the 21st century and cameras are things that exist, and it would be pretty dumb to try and hold an investigation without a camera, so I just decided to make Joey inattentive and hope you guys don't notice, which you just did because I pointed it out... Oh well.

4/15/18 EDIT: Changed the content warning slightly (does needing a content warning mean I should just change it to M or does it mean that I underestimate what the readers can handle?)

4/22/18 EDIT: Removed the content warning entirely because it is unneeded.


	7. Vegetables Are Good Filler

"No, no, no, no, no..."

Johnny carefully leaned Dave on the Onion's soft wall.

"No, no, no, no, no..."

He rubbed the wall, prompting it to secrete healing nectar.

"Please, please, please, please, please..."

He haphazardly smeared the nectar on Dave's stump.

"Please, please, please, please, please..."

Nothing happened.

"Please no, please no, please no..."

Dave blinked slowly and weakly, barely even moving his eyelids.

"Don't die. Don't die. Don't die."

Johnny kneeled over Dave, tears finally starting to spill over.

"Please don't die."

He didn't want this.

Why did Dave have to be so dumb and turn his back on that Sheargrub.

Why did he have to do that so far from the Onion.

Why did...

"Why did you..."

Johnny choked on his words.

"Why did you do that..."

Dave shifted his blank gaze to look at Johnny.

"I'll be fine..." he rasped.

Johnny flinched at Dave's words, almost looking angry. "How can you say that?! You've lost your leg, you've lost so much... blood, you-"

"I'm in the Onion. It'll be OK now."

Johnny blinked, letting a few more tears fall. "Dummy..."

He wiped off his face with the back of his hand. If he were still human, his face would probably have been completely covered with tears and snot...

Johnny took another look at Dave. He actually was looking a little bit better, his characteristic red color slowly growing more vibrant.

Johnny closed his eyes, sighing deeply. "Oh my god that was close..." he muttered.

"...But seriously, Dave," Johnny said louder, "that was pretty stupid of you. What were you thinking, stopping to... to _celebrate_ when there was still a Sheargrub left?!"

Dave winced. "Augh, I didn't realize that it was there, and could you not yell at me right now?"

"I just..." Johnny paused for a moment. "How didn't Davina see? And how didn't you realize?"

"Well, don't you remember how yesterday I walked right into a giant tree?" Dave asked, gesturing to his nose which was just ever so slightly bent upwards. "Both Davina and I can get pretty absorbed into a conversation, ya know."

Johnny raised up his eyebrows and lower eyelids slightly in the closest thing he could muster to a concerned smile. "Yeah, I remember that..."

Dave looked past Johnny. "Everyone's staring at you right now," he said almost jovially, still somewhat irritated.

Johnny turned back slightly and saw all the Pikmin in the Onion awkwardly looking at him and Dave, except for two who had fainted.

"Ah, yeah," he said, not caring about anything but Dave's wellbeing.

Johnny turned to Dave. "...So," he said awkwardly, "how's your leg?" He cringed immediately after saying that.

Dave's 'eyebrows' came together slightly like in a frown. "How do you think?"

Johnny uncomfortably drifted his gaze between Dave's face and gimp leg.

Johnny blinked, not knowing what to say. "Eh..."

Dave sighed.

"It looks... kinda better than before," said Johnny.

Honestly, it did look a bit better. The wound was starting to close, and 'bleeding' was at a minimum. But it was still a half-removed leg, which wasn't very good in any scenario, especially not here. At least the Onion acted as a safe place for Pikmin.

"It was a lot better before it got eaten," Dave snarked.

Johnny scowled. "Hey, you're the only one responsible for that," he pointed out.

"That doesn't mean I can't complain!" Dave replied.

Johnny suddenly got a look of realization. "Wow, you really _have_ been getting more aggressive since turning into a Pikmin," he noted.

"Huh?" Dave uttered.

"I just can't imagine you, as a human, being so... sarcastic and mean and stuff," Johnny explained.

Dave blinked. "...And I can't imagine you saying something so awkwardly like that. So what? We aren't the closest friends; maybe we just don't know each other as well as we think."

"You're just proving my point!" Johnny retorted. "Sure, we weren't the _best_ of friends before this stuff happened, but you've hung out at my house before, and we know each other enough to know the way we've been acting lately isn't us!"

Dave made an expression that looked oddly like biting his lip despite the fact he didn't have teeth or lips. He hesitated for a few seconds.

"...I guess you're right," he admitted.

"Yeah, see?" said Johnny. "This is literally changing us! I hope that if we manage to get out of this somehow, this won't be permanent."

"Me too..."

Johnny and Dave sat there awkwardly for about half a minute.

Johnny looked at Dave.

Dave blinked.

"...This is kinda boring," Johnny pointlessly pointed out. "Would you mind if I go out for a sec?"

"That's fine. I don't really feel like doing anything except lying here at the moment, so you can just... go do whatever," Dave replied.

"OK." Johnny walked over to the nearest exit hole and left the Onion.

* * *

Joel and Davina were standing tensely outside of the Onion. It had been about two, maybe three minutes since Dave got into the Onion, and neither of the two could muster enough confidence in that moment to go in with him.

Joel glanced to Davina, who was fluttering back and forth in an attempt to focus on something other than panic.

Joel then looked back to the Onion. He hadn't looked at it much before, but it was actually a bit pretty. Liquidy stripes of red, yellow, and gray slowly swept across its glossy surface in an almost hypnotizing way. It almost distracted him from the... less than favorable stuff that had just happened.

He sighed slightly, or at least it felt like it. He still didn't really know much of anything that was going on. _'What the Hell is a Sheargrub?'_ he wondered, mind dashing across the quintessential question he had. _'and seriously, how the Hell did we get turned into "Pikmin"?! How did any of this happen?! How can the Onion hold so many Pikmin in such a small space?!'  
_

Joel shook his 'head'. _'I guess I won't get any answers for those any time soon...'_

Johnny popped out from one of the Onion's holes all of a sudden. "Dave's OK!" he said excitedly.

Davina and Joel startledly gasped.

"R-Really?!" asked Davina.

"Yeah! I mean, his leg's still kinda... eaten, but he's not dead and he's healing quick," said Johnny.

Davina pretty much exploded with relief and excitement. "OH YES! THANK GARNISH YES!" she shouted, backflipping in mid-air.

"Alright!" said Joel.

Johnny slid down the Onion's long leg and onto the soil. "He'll be in the Onion recovering for a while," he said, walking up to Joel and Davina, "so now I guess we need to come up with something to do with our time again."

"Ooh!" said Davina, having quickly regained her excited mood. "Maybe we could explore? I think that would be something interesting to do, especially for me because I can fly up and get a good view and man do I wish that the _Pikmin_ games let you explore more than the small areas and especially in _Pikmin 3_ I really got interested in it being Pangaea Ultima and I really wish they would make an open-world _Pikmin_ game or at least let you see what goes on at night and you know what I'm just gonna goonmyownandexplorehopethatsfineOKBYE"

She zipped off.

"...So," Joel uttered. "There goes... Davina, I think her name is."

"Yeah," Johnny replied.

"...Should we follow her?" Joel asked

Johnny seemed to flinch slightly. "N-Nah, let's just let her do her thing."

"Uh, OK."

They stood there for a few seconds.

Joel turned to Johnny. "Hey, so, wouldja mind telling me what a 'Sheargrub' is? You said that Dave had a run-in with a 'Sheargrub'?"

Johnny's eyes widened slightly. He hesitated for a moment.

"Umm..." he muttered.

"...They're kinda like these... Eh..."

A few silent seconds passed as Johnny tried to create a description.

"Uh, hey, you were in the cave earlier when you became a Pikmin, weren't you? Didn't you see anything like an oblong, buggy thing with like a vertical mouth and two little eyes and stuff?" Johnny asked haltingly.

Joel looked back on his memories of yesterday. "Yeah, I remember seeing one of those. I actually accidentally killed one and instinctively took it to my Onion, which is how I found the gray Onion," he said.

A look of realization swept across his eyes.

"...But that was a pretty tiny, weak thing. How did Dave nearly die to one of _those?!_ " he asked incredulously.

Johnny made an uncomfortable expression. "I think you're thinking of female Sheargrubs, which are smaller, pinker, and harmless. Dave got attacked by a male Sheargrub. They're purple and much more vicious," he explained.

Joel nodded slightly. "Oh, OK... Glad I didn't find any of those, then."

"This is actually his second run-in with a Sheargrub, when I think about it. Yesterday a Sheargrub attacked him, and it also attacked his leg! I think it was his right instead of left that time, but still, it's a bit interesting how he got attacked by a Sheargrub two days in a row," Johnny continued.

"Really?" Joel asked. "So he lost his right leg and then grew it back in the Onion, or... what?"

"No, it just chewed it up pretty bad. I think that's because he managed to get it to let go of his leg instead of... literally tearing it out of the Sheargrub's mouth," Johnny explained.

Joel cringed slightly, saying "I see..."

* * *

Davina was excitedly flying high through the air, looking down on the ground below. It felt like something taken out of a movie, with bright green grass, beautiful flowers, and some lively trees stretching on as far as the eye could see. It wasn't completely flat, with _that cave_ clearly visible in the distance accompanied by tall hills, along with some mountains a long ways further. She could also see some other stuff, a bit past the cave, that almost looked like rubble, sparking a flame in her imagination.

She had always been interested in the _Pikmin_ games, along with everything else Nintendo made, and she grew only more interested once she found out it canonically took place millions of years in the future in a post-apocalyptic Earth. In _Pikmin 2_ , the focus was all on finding 'treasures' that were all real world items, from batteries to crowns to even a Nintendo Game & Watch! In _Pikmin 3_ , the focus was on collecting fruits to harvest their seeds and bring them back to a starving alien planet. Those two games were the basis for most of her fan theories, such as the final boss of _Pikmin 3_ and the ninth-ish boss of _Pikmin 2_ being related, if not the same creatures, and also her theory about Pikmin evolution and the reason behind there being all the different types of Pikmin, along with a few of her own fanmade Pikmin types...

This whole situation was her second-biggest dream come true, followed only by being an actual Pokémon Trainer.

Davina realized she was getting carried away with daydreaming, literally. She was mindlessly flying straight up into the sky.

She refocused on the actual environment around her, deciding to fly over the large, rocky cave.

The top of the cave was covered in grass, almost blending into the surrounding hills outside of that giant rocky mouth and a few potholes that exposed its internals.

Past the cave, Davina saw a sight that took her already overloaded interest and beat it over the head with excitement.

The ancient rubble of a long-destroyed house, barely even recognizable as such.

There was something that looked uncannily like a very cracked driveway, and also what might at one point have been a concrete sidewalk and curb, but was now the pebbly edge of a river that could have been a road. Maybe it flooded. Where the actual household would have been, it had only a sunken in patch of land, possibly a long-collapsed basement.

Similar scenes surrounded it, ancient suburbia reclaimed by nature. ' _How long is the difference between Pangaea Ultima and modern Earth supposed to be, again?'_ Davina wondered.

 _'I think it's about... two hundred million years? That's a long time...'_

She went to rest on a branch of a nearby tree and stared in awe at the world before her.

 _'I wonder if I'm in a parallel universe that's two hundred million years in the future, or if those Candypop Buds somehow managed to turn us into Pikmin over the course of that time...'_

After spending probably around at least ten minutes staring at the surroundings and thinking about things Pikmin-related, including a small polish of one of her latest theories about the taxonostrology or whatever of Bulborbs, Davina decided to curiously wander somewhere else.

* * *

Dave was sitting boredly in the Onion, waiting on the slow healing of his leg. He was pressed against the wall of the Onion as closely as possible, and even though it didn't help him much since he was laid in such a way that his right was to the wall, it still helped somewhat.

He was still feeling a bit sick, but at this point it was probably less from losing copious amounts of the closest thing Pikmin had to blood and more from having nothing to do but focus on his leg wound.

He raised up his leg to look at it for a bit. It seemed to be healing subtly and slowly, with what seemed to be about an inch of his leg having regrown. It was probably around a millimeter in actuality, but it seemed bigger given his small perspective.

Dave lowered his leg and blankly looked at the ceiling of the Onion, watching red, yellow, and gray vertical strips of color slowly sweep across its surface.

He sighed.

He was incredibly bored with nothing to do other than those two things, looking at his leg and looking at the Onion's interior.

"Hi!" a high-pitched voice caught his attention.

Dave looked over and saw a slightly nervous-looking Amito.

"Oh, hey," he responded.

Amito pointed to Dave's half-removed leg. "Yer leg..." it muttered, clearly not knowing enough words to express concern.

"Yeah, my leg's a bit... hurt, right now," said Dave.

Amito blinked. "Hurt..." it repeated.

It slowly brought down its right hand and curiously touched the still-exposed 'flesh' under Dave's left knee, and he immediately flinched away from its touch.

"Ow! No, don't touch that!" Dave commanded, crossing his legs.

Amito withdrew its hand and a look of guilt went across its face. "Ah."

Neither Amito nor Dave moved for a few tense, awkward seconds.

"Bye," said Amito, awkwardly going back to the center of the Onion with the rest of the Pikmin.

"Later." Dave went back to lying on the floor.

* * *

Davina had been flying for what she decided had been way too long. She knew she was a long ways from the Onion, and she had been exploring for over an hour. She saw a lot of stuff, like a few Bulborbs, various swarms of Sheargrubs, some trees, and even a few Swooping Snitchbugs she had to swiftly dodge, but at some point it all got boring and samey. A lot of the variety in the _Pikmin_ games came from the different environments the player could explore, so just being in one biome for a while led to her seeing what seemed like every creature the reachable vicinity had to offer, and she also didn't want to get too far away from the others.

She decided to head back.

* * *

"...Hey."

"...Hey!"

"...Hey! Are you alright?"

Antonia was lying down, startled awake by a vaguely familiar-sounding voice. She slowly opened her eyes, seeing a blurry gray-brown background with a white blob enclosing two red blobs on her left.

Her eyes focused after a few seconds, and her vision sharpened into seeing a rocky ceiling and a White Pikmin standing over her.

"Huh...? I'm OK..." Antonia mumbled.

"You fainted," said Mr. Davis.

"Oh, yeah... Sorry if I worried you," she immediately apologized, sitting up.

"It's fine," Mr. Davis reassured.

"OK."

Antonia's eyes widened slightly. "...How did I faint...?"

Antonia gasped suddenly and snapped her head to her right. "Where's Dave?!" she asked.

"Oh, Johnny and Davina left to take him to that Onion thing they were talking about earlier," Mr. Davis explained. "I hope he's alright."

"Why didn't you go with them?"

Mr. Davis blinked. "You fainted. I even told them to go with Dave while I stay here with you. What, do you think I'd just abandon you?"

"Of course not, I just... I think I can take care of myself," replied Antonia.

"You already saw two examples of what kind of weird world we've winded up in," said Mr. Davis. "Going alone would be extremely dangerous. Besides, there's always safety in numbers."

"Uh-huh," Antonia sighed in agreement. "I just want to protect _our children_ , after all."

"I understand, sweetie..." said Mr. Davis.

* * *

Irving was confused and didn't understand anything happening, to say the least.

He had been trapped and eaten by a big blue flower, then he woke up in a giant cave as an equally blue plantlike creature and found a giant monster corpse, and now he was walking aimlessly through very tall grass that seemed to go on endlessly.

He grimaced and looked around.

The sky was as azure as always. Scarce white clouds decorated the blue wonder, and the yellowish-white sun hung a bit off of the middle of the sky, shining over the bright green grass surrounding Irving, along with something flying through the sky?!

Irving blinked, staring at the flying thing. It kind of reminded him of the same thing he had become, with a leaf and a long stem clearly attached to what looked like its head, but it was too far away to clearly make out any other details.

Having nothing else to do, he decided to follow it.

He followed the quickly flying thing for about ten minutes, and eventually it started to fly closer to the ground. Irving kept following it.

And he stumbled upon a big, colorful fruit surrounded by odd plant creatures of different colors: yellow, purple, white, and gray.

Irving immediately stopped as the creatures surprisedly looked at him.

"Uh..." Irving muttered.

The flying thing descended back into his vision. Now that he could see it up close, he noticed its body was a bright pink color with candy blue compound eyes, and it was also a bit smaller than the other plant creatures.

"Hey guys!" the pink creature said in a high-pitched voice to the others. "Whatcha doing?"

A big-eared yellow creature that had a flower on its stem looked incredulously at the pink one. "Um... Davina," it said in a slightly lower voice, "do you not see that?" It pointed straight at Irving.

The pink thing, apparently 'Davina', looked at Irving and immediately made... an excited squeal? Wait, wasn't Davina the name of one of those kids who disappea-

Davina zooped up to Irving. "Oh my garnish~! A Blue Pikmin!" she shouted, gripping the sides of Irving's face like an old aunt accosting her baby nephew.

"How did _you_ get here?" she asked, curiously observing Irving's plant thing body.

Irving slowly opened his mouth. "I'm-"

"OH WAIT SORRY TO INTERRUPT BUT I'M _REALLY_ CURIOUS ABOUT HOW BLUE PIKMIN IN PARTICULAR WORK" Davina shouted, holding open Irving's mouth and gazing into it.

Irving gagged and tried to get Davina off of him. "Wait! It'll be just a little bit longer," she asked, leaning right into Irving's face.

"Davina, please don't randomly try to be a dentist to people you don't know," a new voice interjected. Irving couldn't see it very well since Davina's face took up most of his vision, but it seemed to be coming from a creature with a gray, rocky exterior.

Davina finally got off of Irving. "Sorry~!" she said halfheartedly.

Irving sighed. "As I was trying to say before you got crazy over my mouth..."

He took a deep breath.

"...I am Douglas Irving, Chief of Police."

The creatures' eyes widened slightly.

"Oh," the yellow creature uttered.

"I guess that means everyone's here now...?" it said uncertainly.

Irving looked at the yellow creature scrutinizingly. "What does that mean?"

"I mean, now that you've become a Pikmin, there are seven people turned Pikmin now. That means there aren't any flowers left, so now all we have to do is find a way to get back to being human," it clarified.

"OK, then..." Irving responded.

"I guess we should introduce ourselves," the yellow Pikmin continued. "I'm Jonathan Johnson, Dave's friend, now a Yellow Pikmin, and probably the main reason why everyone else became a Pikmin."

Irving blinked. " _You're_ Johnny?!"

Johnny awkwardly rested his hand behind his head. "Yeah... This whole thing has been getting a lot of attention, hasn't it?"

"That's right, and what do you mean 'main reason why everyone else became a Pikmin'? Didn't this start when Dave dared you to stay in that cave for a night?"

"Yeah, but I was the one who found those flowers, the Candypop Buds, in the first place, and me disappearing is what got Joel to try and investigate on his own which snowballed into everyone else being a Pikmin, too. Sorry about that."

"Huh?" Davina looked incredulously at Johnny. "Why are you _sorry_?! I already said this earlier, but this is AY, EM, -AZING! This is so inspiring and cool and stuff and if we get out of here we're DEFINITELY gonna be famous!"

"Most people don't take well to their life completely changing," Irving retorted.

Davina paused. "...You're not wrong there," she admitted.

"Hey, we're supposed to be introducing ourselves, right?" the gray Pikmin interjected. "Well, I'm Joel. I'm Johnny's big brother, and a Rock Pikmin."

The rest of the Pikmin there also introduced themselves, so there was Johnny, Joel, Antonia, David Davis I, and Davina.

"OK," said Irving. "Now that I know who you all are... Where's Dave II? I know he's also one of the missing."

"Oh, he's in the Onion," said Johnny.

"The what?" Irving asked.

Johnny, Antonia, and Mr. Davis all cringed simultaneously. Joel looked curiously at them. "What're you guys looking so uncomfortable for-"

"OOH, LEMME TELL YOU~!" Davina shouted. "The Onion is a special kind of fruit or something that appears in all the _Pikmin_ games that acts as a sort of nest for the Pikmin species and they were named by Captain Olimar because he thought they kind of looked like onions the vegetable which I don't really get but whatever anyway there are different colors of Onion for the different colors of Pikmin like Red, Yellow, Blue, et cetera and if multiple colors of Onion come together they form a Master Onion which can hold multiple colors of Pikmin and is also the kind of Onion right here!"

Davina looked incredibly proud of herself after finishing that speech.

Irving looked slightly taken aback by it.

"...OK," said Irving, looking towards the 'Onion'. He noticed that it only had red, yellow, and gray in its surface even though there were far more than that present. "So I guess this Master Onion only has Red, Yellow, and Gray Pikmin in it? Because those are the only colors that it seems to have."

"Rock Pikmin," Joel corrected, "and yes, that's all it has."

"So where are the other Onions?" Irving asked.

"We don't know," said Johnny.

"Hey! That gives me an idea!" Davina interjected excitedly. "Earlier Johnny and Joel were wondering what to do with our time, but now I know~! Let's try to find Onions for all the other colors!"

"How are we gonna do that?" Irving asked his eighth question so far.

Davina blinked. "Uh..."

"Maybe let's just kill something and we could instinctively carry back its body? That's how I found the Rock Onion," Joel suggested.

"Oh yeah! That sounds like a plan!" said Davina.

Mr. Davis and Antonia grimaced slightly. "Sounds kinda gross..." said Mr. Davis.

"That's the kind of world we're in right now," said Johnny. "We just gotta deal with it."

"At this point, nothing is too crazy to me," Irving sighed.

"Less talking, more finding ourselves some Onions!" Davina said with a twirl.

* * *

WORD COUNT: 4202

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey! Glad I managed to finish this chapter in time. Happy 4/20 ;D Please make sure to review, and thank you for reading.)

5/2/18 EDIT: Rewrote the AN to not say I'm gonna upload biweekly because, let's be honest, asking me to keep a consistent schedule is like asking an epileptic penguin to draw a pixel-perfect recreation of the Mona Lisa using a tambourine and parakeet feathers.  
5/3/18: Also, while I have your attention, here's something that I'd like to tell you because honestly I'm really unhappy with this whole chapter but especially this one moment and I'm not sure if it comes off as clever writing or just some stupid mistake:  
OK originally I had a big old paragraph here but I accidentally lost all that and don't wanna rewrite the whole thing so... This story is supposed to be third person limited and kinda be like if the character it's focusing on were writing it, and I think that Davina would just randomly namedrop things without context for the person she's talking to, and that's why I just randomly mentioned 'Swooping Snitchbugs' in that one paragraph. Even though you probably know what they are, and even though probably no one noticed or cared, I really feel like I need to clarify it.


	8. Chapter 8

**(As consolation for cancelling this fic, I will upload these last two unfinished chapters. This chapter is mostly complete, but a few parts are missing. It's not too hard to fill in the gaps, though.)**

Johnny, Joel, Irving, and all the Davises but Dave were walking through the grass of the Pikmin world, trying to find some new colors of Onion. Davina was flying about a foot above the group, looking around at the environment for anything that could be of importance.

"Hey! Look over there!" Davina cried, pointing to something that couldn't be seen past the tall grass.

Johnny looked at Davina. "Look at what? I can't really see much besides grass in my face."

"Ah, right," Davina muttered. "...Well, about like half a foot away there's this clearing with a bunch of Bulborbs in it! And there are just enough to bring one to each new Onion!" she said happily.

"Wait," Mr. Davis interjected, "'half a foot away'? I don't want a super long answer or anything, but how is there something so big, so close by, and we don't see it from here? And how aren't we waking it up?"

"Oh, hasn't anyone said that Pikmin are like half an inch tall yet?" Davina asked.

A moment of silence passed.

"Oh, OK," said Irving.

"Half a _what_?" Antonia said incredulously.

"Half an inch, probably not including the stem," Johnny responded calmly.

"Yup~!" said Davina. "Specifically two centimeters, so distances are a lot bigger for Pikmin than for people."

"Woah," said Mr. Davis.

"Oh, also, there's four _Dwarf_ Bulborbs, so it'll be pretty easy slaying," Davina continued.

"Alright!" said Johnny.

"...Wait, right, there's also a regular Bulborb, too, so..." Davina muttered.

She was quiet for a second.

"...I think we can handle it," she continued.

Johnny blinked. "A... regular Bulborb?" he asked.

"Yeah," affirmed Davina.

Johnny speechlessly stared at Davina.

"Nope!" he said, walking away from the group. "Nope, nope, nope!"

"Huh? Wait! Johnny!" said Davina.

"No thanks!" Johnny continued walking away.

"What? What's the matter?" Joel asked, walking up to Johnny.

"What do you mean, 'What's the matter'..." Johnny paused. "Oh, yeah, you were just... hanging out in the Onion or whatever when that happened."

"When _what_ happened?!" Joel asked concernedly.

Johnny sighed. "When Davina nearly got me killed when trying to kill a Bulborb."

"Hey!" Davina interjected. "You _didn't_ get killed, though! In fact, you killed that Bulborb all on your own!"

"That's just because you dropped me right on its eye and I got lucky, you jerk!" Johnny retorted. "Do you have any clue how terrifying that was to me?!"

"I think I do, judging from how you screamed like a baby," Davina snarked. Johnny scowled at Davina.

"Excuse me," Mr. Davis interrupted the impending argument, "but I think we shouldn't be fighting right now? I'm pretty sure we should be focusing on getting some Bulborb bodies... Jeez, that sounds weird."

Johnny and Davina shared a bitter look for a short moment. "Fine, I guess," said Johnny.

They awkwardly moved back to the rest of the group, and Davina flew down to be closer to the others.

"OK, guys, I have a plan. Just listen to me, and we'll be done with this in a flash!" she said determinedly. Johnny looked at her untrustingly, but didn't say anything.

"Sounds like you might not be the best person to be leading us right now, but I'll go along with this," said Joel.

Davina squinted at Joel. "Now what's that supposed to mean?"

"I think it's pretty obvious," Johnny butted in.

Davina 'frowned' at both of them. "I know what I'm doing. I've 100 percented _all_ of the _Pikmin_ games! Even _Hey! Pikmin_!" she bragged, desperate to be taken seriously.

"Oh, that just sounds _wonderful_! You must just be an expert on all things Pikmin~!" said Johnny.

"Ooh, that's the change of heart I'd like to see! Thanks!" Davina replied obliviously.

Johnny looked at Davina. "...Yeah."

"Alright," said Davina, "Anyway, let's go into the... Bulborb... nest... thing, and beat 'em up!" She flew up and over the tall wall of grass, followed by the rest of the group.

There was a small flattened circle made out of the grass, with it being piled up and laid down flat as a cushion on the ground. In the circle, there were five Bulborbs, four of them being very small compared to the one in the center. They were all deeply sleeping, torsos slowly expanding and contracting with each slow breath.

Davina swooped down and picked up Joel by the stem. "Huh?!" Joel uttered as he was raised into the air. Johnny looked concernedly at them, the urge to intervene rising.

"Let me use you for a sec, OK?" she said to Joel.

Davina glanced at Johnny. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna screw up this time!"

Davina quickly tossed Joel right onto a Dwarf Bulborb, and he made a startled cry as he flew through the air and hit the Bulborb dead-on, crushing it. It barely made a sound aside from a meaty **squi~sh**.

"Woah," Joel uttered, before being picked up by Davina and thrown again.

This time, Davina missed her mark slightly and threw Joel onto the side of a Dwarf Bulborb, leaving a large gash in its side. It immediately snapped awake and started to yowl in pain, eyes turned to pinpricks.

"Oh, carp!" Davina muttered, quickly deciding to hover above the Dwarf Bulborb herself and drop down on it. She crashed onto the Dwarf's eye, halting its loud shrieks as well as its life.

Unfortunately, it seemed the other Bulborbs were already stirring. The biggest Bulborb slowly stood up, blinking groggily as its sensitive eyes adjusted to the bright daylight. It turned around, noticed the two dead Bulborbs at its feet, along with the group of Pikmin, and immediately made a loud, imposing...

 **ROOAARR!**

"Get back, guys!" Davina commanded, hovering to the Bulborb's eye level. "I'll distract it."

 _'She's gonna get herself killed,'_ Johnny thought as he retreated into the grass with the rest.

The Bulborb furiously and quickly charged forward at Davina, who quickly flew away from it. "Yeah! That's right! Come over here, _far_ , far away!" she taunted, doing spins as she led the Bulborb.

The sounds of Davina and the large Bulborb slowly got fainter as they went off into the distance.

After a few seconds, Johnny stepped out back into the little grass arena.

The two Dwarf Bulborbs still alive were staring shockedly at the corpses of the two that had already been killed. They quickly shifted their gaze from the bodies to Johnny as he slowly stepped closer. They also started to step closer, anger clearly visible in their large eyes.

"...Heyyy," Johnny said awkwardly.

One of the Dwarf Bulborbs lunged at Johnny, and he quickly jumped to the side. "Woah!"

"Wait a sec, Johnny!" Joel shouted, poking out from between the blades of grass. "What are you doing?!"

Johnny quickly sidestepped around a Dwarf Bulborb and jumped on its back, pounding it with his flower. "What do you think I'm doing?!" The Dwarf Bulborb screeched and stood up, throwing Johnny onto the ground.

"I think you're gonna get your ass kicked or something, that's what!" Joel said as he ran to and tackled an approaching Dwarf Bulborb to the ground, flipping it on its side. "You can't fight two things at once and not expect to get your crap pounded in!"

The other Dwarf Bulborb startledly looked at its tipped sibling before focusing back on Johnny, who had ran right up to its face. "Hi there!" he exclaimed, punching it in the eye. It made a pained sound and stumbled backwards, teary eyes closed.

"Nice one, Johnny!" said Joel. "But I got this!" He tackled the other Dwarf Bulborb onto its back.

A couple seconds passed. The incapacitated Bulborbs flailed their legs in the air, making panicked groans.

"...That was kinda anticlimactic," said Johnny.

"But effective," Joel pointed out.

Johnny looked at the Bulborbs. "I guess we should kill these now..." he said.

"Ah, yeah," Joel replied.

Joel blinked. "...Wait, how are we gonna do that without Davina to drop us on 'em?" he asked.

Johnny shrugged. "I dunno. I think we could maybe just hit them a bunch of times. It's not like they can fight back right now."

 _'Wow, that sounds pretty morbid... Probably because it is morbid,'_ thought Johnny.

"Sounds good, but how are we gonna do that without knocking them back over?" asked Joel.

Johnny furrowed his 'brow'. "You have a point..." he admitted. He paused for a second. "...Maybe we could just, like, latch onto them and hit them with our flowers? That's what I did with that Bulborb's eye."

"That Bulborb's eye?" asked Joel.

"Agh, right, you weren't there when that happened, either. Remember when I mentioned Davina almost got me killed from dropping me straight onto a Bulborb? She did that because apparently the eyes are a Bulborb's weak spot, and I actually somehow managed to defeat it by holding onto its eye for dear life and whacking 'til it stopped moving," Johnny clarified with a slightly irritated tone. _'Honestly, it was actually kinda effective, but there's no chance I'd ever say that out loud,'_ he thought.

"...OK," said Joel.

Johnny turned to face one of the still-living Dwarf Bulborbs. He slowly walked towards it.

"Let's see if this'll work."

He stood in front of it for a moment before hopping up and holding onto its body. He quickly and forcefully whacked it with his flower as it growled in pain. He hit it over and over for a few minutes until, eventually, it stopped moving.

Johnny dropped back onto the ground.

"Dang," Joel uttered.

[agh i fucking wrote a little more of this before but lost it, future zave write the rest of the scene for me and have the bulborbs dead (and the big one in a ditch or something) and have like everyone but dave there]

"Oh _carp_ , I forgot!" Davina exclaimed. "You need _three_ Pikmin to carry a Dwarf Bulborb!"

Johnny looked at Davina. "Huh? Why's that an issue?"

"Because! If more than one color of Pikmin at a time carries an object, and none of them form a majority, or at least the largest minority, meaning there's an equal amount of Pikmin colors, then the direction taken will be randomly decided between the colors," Davina explained.

"...OK, but _why_ is that a prob-"

"And if the direction is randomly chosen, then assuming we have, say, Johnny (Yellow), Joel (Rock), and me (Winged) carrying one of these Bulborb bodies, there will be a one-in-three chance of carrying it to a hypothetical Winged Onion, which is what we would want, and a two-thirds chance of taking it to the Red-Yellow-Rock Master Onion, which is what we wouldn't want."

Johnny blinked. "I get your point, b-"

"There are various reasons why this is an issue. Firstly, I know you might be thinking 'Couldn't we just put it down and then pick it back up until we get the path we want?' And you would have a point... But. It would actually be pretty hard to tell just where we'd actually be heading, since even if we happen to be heading in the direction of the Master Onion, it could be possible the Onion we're really looking for is in that direction, and we wouldn't be able to tell until it's too late. I think."

"Just lemme-"

"Second, due to how we need at least three Pikmin to carry a Dwarf Bulborb, that means we won't be able to carry all of them at once. Thus, there is a chance that daytime predators could smell the dead bodies not being carried and come eat them before we can take them to the other Onions!"

"OK, OK!" Johnny shouted. "I understand that, but there's something you're seriously overlooking!"

Davina paused. "What could I possibly be missing?" she asked.

"We can push things! We can just _roll_ them!"

Davina blinked. "Oh my _garnish,_ how didn't I think of that?! You're a genius, Johnny!" she said excitedly, zooping down right next to Johnny's face.

"It's pretty simple..." Johnny muttered.

Davina fluttered over to one of the Dwarf Bulborbs that she crushed with Joel. "I guess we should get started! Which color should we try first?"

"We need to find White, Purple, Pink, and Blue Onions," said Mr. Davis. "I think we should start with..." He put a hand to his 'chin'. "Um, how about..."

"How about Purple?" asked Antonia.

Davina made a gasping sound. "OH, I _just_ remembered!" She twirled excitedly. "I don't know how this slipped my mind, but Purple Pikmin have carrying strength ten times greater than other Pikmin types! That means you can carry it, Mom!"

Antonia blinked. "Interesting," she said.

"Let's start with that, then," suggested Johnny.

"OK." Antonia walked up to the Bulborb that Davina was hovering over and awkwardly put her hands on it.

"Hm... Let's see, how do I... uh..." she mumbled as she tried to get a good grip on it. "Hm..." She put her hands under its body.

"Let's see if I can..." She assumed a position akin to a squat and started to slowly lean backwards, lifting the Dwarf Bulborb off of the ground. "Hup!"

Everyone there made a slight noise of surprised impressedness, except for Irving who was quietly dissociating.

"Huh," uttered Joel, eyes widened slightly.

"Alright," said Johnny.

Antonia stood still for a few seconds.

"...Um," Davina muttered. "Why are you just standing there?"

Antonia hesitantly replied, "I don't really... feel like going anywhere. I just feel like I'm pointlessly holding up a Bulborb."

Davina stared blankly. "...Oh."

An awkward silence passed.

"...Then put it down, I guess?" Davina continued.

Antonia silently placed the Dwarf Bulborb back on the ground and shrugged.

"Don't forget about my idea of rolling them," interjected Johnny.

"Oh... Right!" said Davina. "Y'know, how about we try that out right now?"

"OK." Johnny walked over to the Bulborb as Antonia stepped back. "I've actually tried this before, and it worked, but it worked best with at least two Pikmin." He turned his head to the right. "Hey, Joel. Come help me with this."

"Huh? ...Mm-hm," Joel uttered as he walked up next to Johnny. They rested their hands on the Dwarf Bulborb's side. "This is pretty simple," said Johnny. "We just gotta push it forward."

Joel did the closest thing he could to a nod, which was more like a bow, and pushed on the Bulborb in unison with Johnny. It was tipped over onto its side, then tipped over again.

They started to roll the Bulborb.

"Hey, hey, hey, wait a second!"

-Johnny blinked. He, Joel, and the Bulborb were in the grass, at least a foot away from where they were before.

He confusedly looked around. Joel looked confused, too.

Davina flew down next to them. "You just started running off with the Bulborb! What are you guys doing?!"

Johnny and Joel silently looked at Davina.

 _'That didn't happen when I did it with Amito...'_ thought Johnny.

"...I have no idea," said Joel.

Davina tilted her head to the side. "Huh. That's interesting..." she muttered quietly.

"What's interesting?" Johnny asked.

"Uh." Davina blinked. "It's just interesting how you two just kinda blanked out and started rolling it away."

Johnny shrugged with a slight frown. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Should we put it back?" Joel asked, taking his hands off of the Bulborb.

"Uh, _duh_ ," scoffed Davina. "Remember how we went out here specifically to find the rest of the colors of Onion?"

Joel 'frowned'. "Yeah."

"Well, we already have the Master Onion discovered, so we don't need you guys to take it there."

"Wow! Thanks, Captain Obvious!" said Joel.

Johnny grimaced nervously. _"_ Joel," he whispered, "Let's just... go put it back. We can deal with Davina's attitude later."

Davina grunted in irritation. "Well, you're welcome! You, um... annoying person!" she exclaimed.

Joel rolled his eyes. "Fine," he whispered back.

They walked to the other side of the Dwarf Bulborb and started to push it.

"OK, OK, wait! That's enough!"

In an instant, they were back in the grass arena where the other Bulborb corpses were. They let go of the Bulborb, slightly disoriented.

"OK, time to take these Bulborbs to some Onions!" said Davina as she flew down next to Johnny and Joel. "Hm... Let's have Irving go with Johnny to find a Blue Onion, and I'll go with Joel to find a Winged Onion."

"Uh," Johnny uttered. "Alright?"

"Sounds like a plan," said Irving.

"I guess..." said Joel.

Irving walked next to Johnny.

Johnny shrugged.

"I guess let's do this?" said Johnny.

Irving silently nodded and walked over to a Bulborb. Johnny followed, glancing at Joel and Davina going to their own Bulborb.

Irving laid his hands on it.

Johnny hesitantly put his right hand on it. "Hey, um, Mr. Irving..." he muttered.

Irving looked at Johnny.

"...Why have you been so quiet?" Johnny asked. "You haven't really said or done anything since we found you. Is something the matter?"

Irving slowly blinked and looked back at the Bulborb.

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but we're gonna have to act as a team in this place. That means we'll need to, you know, actually talk to one another," Johnny sighed.

He decided to leave the topic for later and started to push the Bulborb with Irving.

Instantly, they were who-knows-how-long from where they were before. They were standing on the gravelly bank of a river, water rushing past them into the distance.

"Woah," said Irving, lifting his hands from the Dwarf Bulborb. "What was that? We just... blinked, and it's like we teleported here! I can't remember a single moment between starting to push that Bulborb and getting..." He gestured around himself. "here."

 _'So you're finally talking...'_

"I dunno." Johnny shrugged. "It just happened."

 _'I wonder if I'm blacking out because I'm doing it with another "human"... That sounds weird.'_

"Just when I thought I was getting adjusted to this weird place..." Irving muttered.

They looked around for a couple seconds. There wasn't much of interest. The river took up most of the view to their right, and to the left was a slow incline up to grassy dirt.

"We stopped here," said Johnny. "Shouldn't that mean the Blue Onion's here?"

"Or maybe we've hit a roadblock," said Irving.

Johnny sighed. "Yeah, or maybe that..."

Johnny stepped away from the Bulborb and faced the edge of the river. "Has anyone mentioned the differences between the types of Pikmin to you yet?"

"Huh?" Irving walked hesitantly next to Johnny. "N-no."

Johnny sighed. "Guess that means I have to tell you."

He looked at the rushing water. "I'll start with Blue Pikmin, the kind you are."

"Blue Pikmin are able to breath underwater because they have gills," Johnny explained. "They can also swim."

Johnny laid a hand on his 'chest'. "Yellow Pikmin are resistant to electricity. They're lighter than the other kinds and can be thrown higher distances."

"Rock Pikmin can not be crushed due to their hard shells," Johnny continued.

"I think Winged Pikmin are self explanatory,"

"White Pikmin can see things underground,"

"Purple Pikmin are strong and heavy,"

"And Red Pikmin are fireproof," he concluded.

Irving nodded. "OK..."

He blinked.

"You said Blue Pikmin can swim, Jonathan?"

"Yes, and please call me Johnny," Johnny replied with a nod.

"Alright, Johnny," Irving looked at the river, then the Bulborb. "...I think I have an idea."

* * *

WORD COUNT: 3341

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Y'know, I've been thinking lately about how this fanfic is totally unrealistic. And I don't mean the 'people transforming into Pikmin' part, I mean how the characters react the way they do and also how this is probably the most unrealistic depiction of police ever made in fanfiction history. ...OK, that's a huge overstatement, I know, but I really feel that way... Whatever. If you're reading this fanfic and enjoying it, you probably don't care about stuff like that... You might care about how I actually haven't even looked at the reviews for, like, two months. This probably sounds really stupid and immature, but I'm really afraid that you guys think I'm a hack who can't write for shit, so I haven't actually looked at the reviews. I've updated some chapters once or twice, and I literally covered up the screen while I went to the 'Manage Stories' page so that I can't see the review count go up. I'm sorry. I'll try to suck less at writing from now on... and maybe get a grip on my emotions.  
Also I totally screwed up with writing Irving's relations with the characters. I would change it if I didn't want to make you guys wait longer, but you should just know that what I was going for was that he doesn't exactly trust the other characters and the other characters don't trust him but instead I accidentally just made Johnny look awkward.)


	9. Chapter 9

If there were pictures in the dictionary, the picture for "obsessed" would probably be of Davina Davis. At least, that what's Joel believed. He and Davina had been carrying (or more accurately, slowly rolling) a Dwarf Bulborb to a Winged Onion that neither of them knew existed outside of their instinct to carry things to an Onion.

At some point, they had to stop going due to how the hills they were crossing grew too steep, and immediately afterward Davina started to go on and on about stuff like 'pathfinding' and 'ultra-spicy berries' and drowned her words in a geeky jargon sauce that solidified into a rocky surface and smashed into Joel's tired 'ears'.

"...So, I'm thinking that maybe, given how we need to go in this direction and it seems we have no detour, we could use the strength provided by ultra-spicy berries to charge at the Dwarf Bulborb and force it up! Whaddayou think, Joel?"

Eventually, Joel had finally managed to start filtering Davina out without her noticing, making a couple interested-looking nods and the occasional "M-hm."

Davina kept talking for what seemed like forever, when...

"Joel?"

"Huh? W-what?"

Davina sighed. "Aren't you listening to me?! I asked, what do you think about it?"

"Uhh... I..." Joel paused. "I... think it's good, yeah. Definitely alright."

Davina's expression changed to something like a smile. "Alright~!"

Joel blinked. "Yeah...?"

Davina grabbed Joel's arm. "Let's go try it, then!"

"Huh?!"

Davina started to drag him along.

"U-Uh... M-hm."

After a minute of awkwardly being led, Joel arrived in front of a couple strange-looking plants that were thin and stood tall above the two humans-turned-Pikmin by at least three times their height. At the plants' ends were small clusters of blood-red berries that shone in the daylight, contrasting with the plants' white petals.

"These," Davina explained, "are the Burgeoning Spiderworts I mentioned! They have the ultra-spicy berries that can power up Pikmin!" She paused with an excited look on her face, seeming to wait for a reaction.

"...M-hm, OK," Joel uttered.

Davina flew up to a Spiderwort and laid a hand on one of the berries. "Let's see if I can get this..."

She hugged up to the berry, which was just slightly smaller than herself. She moved her head around, inspecting it.

Davina leaned her head back and jerked it forward to whack it. After just a couple more whacks, the berry detached from the Spiderwort, taking Davina with it.

"Uwaa~h!" Davina cried as she fell, still holding tight to the berry.

 _'Who says "Uwaah"...?'_ Joel wondered as Davina got back up.

"Whew!" said Davina. "That went easy!"

"M-hm," Joel said flatly.

Davina picked up the berry. She looked at Joel. "Now how does this work..." she murmured, fluttering towards him.

She tossed the berry at Joel.

Joel was knocked over by the unexpected berry hitting him right in the face. "Urgh!"

Davina gasped, then squinted and put her hands to her face. "PPFFVFVFFFKKHHHHNN," she uttered, trying not to laugh.

Joel sat up and glared at Davina.

"I-I'm sorryy!" Davina said, letting out a chuckle with each syllable.

Joel groaned. He turned to the berry, which had rolled off of him. Davina followed his gaze.

"OK, so in the games..." Davina muttered, picking up the berry again.

"In the games you throw berries at your Pikmin and make them fall over?" Joel said flatly.

Davina's eyes widened as she stifled another giggle. "N-no! These ultra-spicy berries can be used to power up your Pikmin temporarily... But that's with the spray. I don't know how to get use out of the berry itself..."

Davina's head perked up and it seemed like a lightbulb went off inside her head. "Oh! Of course!" she said, laying the berry back on the ground.

 _'I don't like the way she said that...'_ thought Joel.

Davina grabbed Joel's stem swiftly and lifted him by what felt like a foot to him into the air.

"AH!" Joel yelped as he was taken up. He would definitely not get used to this any time soon. "What are you doing now?!" He kicked slightly in instinct.

"I think it speaks for itself~," replied Davina.

She let go of Joel, and he fell onto the berry. It practically exploded under Joel's stiff, rocky body, as its crimson juices spilled onto him and the grass below.

"Ew!" Joel sat up immediately, cringing at the liquid sticking to his body. It almost reminded him of blood, if not for the strong scent being much more like a weird pepper than iron-rich hemoglobin. He couldn't see much of it stuck to him, but he noticed that it seemed to soak into his noodly arms.

"Huh...?"

"...OOOHHHH!" Joel shouted as he felt some sort of energy course through his inflexible body. He stood up and started jittering in place, wanting to do every activity in the world twice over and then again and _holy crap what the hell is this stuff_

"Wh-wh-what-th-thehellisthis?!" Joel stuttered like his mouth was folding over itself, prompting Davina to finally laugh her ass off.

Joel only glared impaciently with twitchy eyelids at Davina as she tried to force some words past her cackling but she only managed to say a weird gibberish made of the sounds "Ghk-khhh nnnnggghhrst I-I'mfffffff hahah-HAHAHA"

Davina laughed so hard she couldn't focus on flying and she just tumbled to the ground in a tornado of snorts and chuckles. Joel quickly and annoyedly jogged toward her. He kicked her slightly and that seemed to finally get her out of laughter city.

"Pfffh, sorry, Joel~!" said Davina. "That's just the effect of the ultra-spicy berry; it makes you way more energized and stronger."

"O-k-kay," Joel replied, "but culdn't'cha'vewarn'dme?!"

"I guess I coulda, but where's the fun in that?"

Joel looked at Davina like he was trying to burn a hole into her with the sheer power of will.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry. But you know that there's a reason why I did this!"

"Noidon't," Joel instantly forced out his words instead of wasting time thinking.

"Pshaw! Yes you _do_!" Davina put a finger to her left 'temple'. "Here's a hint: it starts with DWARF and ends with BULBORB and we've been carrying it all the way here."

"Th-the... thefuck'nbulborb?!"

Davina made the fakest gasp imaginable. "Oh! Language! But yes, it is!"

Joel facepalmed. "O-fucking-kay then let's geddon that," he said as he power-walked to the Bulborb corpse (Bulborpse).

Joel took a couple steps back, then charged at full speed into the body. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" he yelled like a man trying to piss with a kidney stone. He rolled the Bulborpse with the fervor of a dung beetle making a ball of dung as he took it over the steep incline.

Joel made it to the top of the small hill, then proceeded to keep on pushing the body like he was trying to push it into another dimension and he ended up falling straight down the hill.

"Oh! Are you OK, Joel?" Davina asked half-worriedly, fluttering down to Joel.

Joel glared at Davina.

"I'll take that as a yes," Davina said.

Joel stood back up, cursing under his breath. Davina paused.

"...Well, let's get back to moving this Bulborb," Davina said a bit sheepishly.

" _Sure_ ," uttered Joel. He jogged over to the Dwarf Bulborb with Davina trailing behind.

Joel grabbed the Bulborb, followed by Davina.

"Wait," said Davina.

Joel turned to Davina. "What?"

"I think you should grab it _after_ me."

"Why?" Joel asked, then sighed.

"Be-CAUSE~!" Davina exclaimed, "I think I've explained this already, but basically, if something is carried by a color of Pikmin, and then an equal number of another color, the location they'll take the thing to is where the first color would take it-"

"OKyeahIgeddit," Joel said as he took his hands off the Bulborb, letting Davina grab it before him.

"Alright," replied Davina, "let's go!"

Joel could feel the ultra-spicy berry's effects start to wear off already, but he ignored it and pushed the Bulborb with Davina.

In the blink of an eye, like teleportation, they had rolled it somewhere else. They were standing at the base of a tree. It was an incredibly tall tree, even by Pikmin standards. Its rough brown bark pierced through the bright blue visage of the sky like a wooden knife cutting a cake made out of crab blood.

Joel looked around. Davina did, too.

"Huh," said Davina.

"Where's the Onion?" Joel asked pointlessly.

"I dunno." Davina shrugged.

"It should be somewhere around here, right?" Joel took a few steps toward the tree. "Let's go looking."

* * *

Johnny and Irving were standing at the edge of a large river. They were originally trying to take a Dwarf Bulborb corpse to a Blue Onion, but they had no way to pass the river.

"I have an idea," Irving had said.

"What is it?" Johnny asked.

Irving stepped over to the Bulborb, resting his hand on its side.

With a strained "HNNNNNH," Irving started pushing it solo.

Johnny blinked. "Don't tell me you're gonna push it in the-"

Irving pushed it into the water, holding tight onto it and screaming like he was doing a Tarzan impression as the river's flow swiftly threw him down its path.

Johnny stared in befuddlement.

He slowly stepped in the direction that Irving went, eventually breaking into a sprint. "Dammit, Irving! What do you think you're doing?!"

 _'I barely know this guy, but I already know he's weird!'_

* * *

"NYEUUEUEEGH," Joel groaned in discomfort. He wouldn't say he was scared of heights, but he was definitely developing some sort of acrophobia after being lifted up what felt like a thousand miles into the air by Davina while they were trying to get to the top of the tree.

"Agh-! Stop wiggling so much!" said Davina, clearly struggling with holding Joel as he nervously kicked and flailed.

"Do we really need to be doing this?!" Joel yelled in response. He definitely wasn't afraid, though. Not at all. What do you mean his voice is cracking, you're totally just hearing things, definitely.

"You agreed!" Davina retorted. "You agreed to go to the top of the tree in case there's something there!"

"SHUT UP! I didn't agree to have you pull me into space with your stupid wings!"

"You didn't stop me and my stupid wings~! Also, how else are we gonna get up there!"

"Yeah, like I could stop a bird plant using noodle arms."

Davina was silent for a moment. "Does that mean you could stop a plant that is a bird and that uses noodle arms, you could use noodle arms to stop a plant that is a bird, or you could use noodle arms to stop a factory for birds?"

Joel paused puzzedly. "...None of those. Haven't you heard of _sarcasm?_ "

"Yes, why?" Davina asked.

Joel speechlessly stared at Davina, or more specifically at a small sliver of Davina's pink Pikmin hands around his stem. Joel then glanced down for a moment before cringing in what definitely wasn't fear and just opting to stare straight forward, trying to suppress the obsolete feeling of needing to vomit.

 _'Davina's so weird,_ _'_ he thought.

* * *

 **Scrip scrip scrip scrip scrip scrip scrip.**

That's roughly what it sounds like when Johnny runs across rough gravel trying to catch up to a crazy police-officer-turned-Blue-Pikmin who decided that it was a good idea to throw himself down a river like a fish wannabe.

Johnny had been running for just a few minutes, but it felt like hours had passed, with his aching legs screaming at him to stop and with the hard gravel hurting his feet.

Eventually, Johnny came across a bend in the river. On the other side of the river were Irving and the Dwarf Bulborb he had taken with him. He was dripping wet and clinging onto it with a shell-shocked expression on his face, eyes widened like he was traumatized by a plot twist in a book.

"HEY!" Johnny shouted.

Irving didn't respond.

"...YOU ALRIGHT?"

Irving slowly pushed himself up, shivering and mumbling something that was barely audible even to Johnny. "...never going in the water again..."

Johnny sighed.

"ARE YOU OK, DOUG?!" he yelled.

Irving startledly looked around for a moment before noticing Johnny. "...I'M FINE, AND PLEASE CALL ME IRVING," he yelled back.

"OK IRVING!"

They stood silently for a couple of seconds.

"...ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE?" Johnny asked.

"Uh, NO!" Irving replied.

"THEN COME OVER TO THIS SIDE!"

"...NO."

Johnny blinked. "WHY NOT?!"

"I... I DON'T THINK I NEED TO!"

Johnny felt like smirking. "YOU'RE AFRAID, AREN'T YOU?"

Irving blinked. "HELL-uh, HECK NO!" he yelled offendedly.

Johnny stifled a chuckle. "SURE, SURE!"

Irving looked away and angrily grumbled.

"...not gonna take this shit from a fucking kid..." Johnny could faintly hear.

* * *

Joel was regretting all of his life decisions so far.

More specifically, he was regretting letting Davina pick him up and fly to the top of a tree in hope that there would be a Winged Onion somewhere around it, even though it was just looking for a needle in a haystack.

 **(...I'm sorry. This is over.)**


End file.
